the dictionary

my teammate and me were having a random conversation a few days ago, when he was asking me the meanings of random english phrases and expressions. not sure where exactly he was getting his questions from (he was reading them off his phone), but he was astonished when i answered every single challenge (until he gave me some latin word, the botanical name of some plant, which i obviously didn't know).

he was surprised that i knew all these words and phrases, and was wondering how i learned them. i told him that i came across all of them while reading. which was true. he agreed that these meanings could be guessed from the context while reading, but was surprised that i could remember each and every one of them.

which is when i realized:

i have an eidetic memory for words.

in fact, while i'm terrible at pronunciation, i'm pretty good at spelling too. if there's a word i can't spell verbally, i'll certainly be able to point out the mistake when i see the word in print. something just won't look right to me.

which reminds me of a recent tweet:

manoeuvre. that's the first word i had to ask my mom the spelling of since I was 13. today. hmmm.

probably an exaggeration, but not by a long stretch.