Do Your Planets Have Papparazzi, Too?

One day, Meredith and I were laying in my bed talking and one of those incredible conversations unfolded little by little.

She started by saying, "You know what the weirdest thing to me is? Gravity." We talked about it for a few minutes and the conversation took a predictable course into the topic of space in general. Meredith shared with me that she always thought of the planets as different colors. Pluto, for example, was purple. At one point, I asked her what color Saturn was and she said, "Whoops, Mrs. Toler forgot Saturn in that picture. Let me get another picture." What she was saying was that during our conversation, she was looking at a mental picture she had of the Solar System from Mrs. Toler. Mrs. Toler was her third grade teacher. Meredith must have been looking at a picture her teacher had drawn on the board of the Solar System in which Saturn was missing. Fortunately, Meredith has multiple mental pictures of the Solar System.  She said it's hard to count, but she estimates maybe she has about 100 pictures in her mind.

So, as Meredith buried her head in the pillow, pausing the conversation while she was looking for a more complete mental picture of the Solar System, I asked her where exactly she was looking for this new picture. She explained to me that she has three places to look for space. There is "space" as in a physical area like a person's bedroom or a museum room. Then there is "space" like in your personal space (or your "space bubble" she explained). Lastly, there is a file on "space" as in outer space.

I asked her if she remembered when one day she told me that she had gone to her mental pictures of the Solar System and started labeling it with words for the first time. It was about two weeks after we started our therapy with Dr. Florance to improve her verbal thinking system. It was one of the obvious signs that the therapy was really working.  It was so remarkable. Now instead of just thinking of the Solar System in pictures, she was thinking of it in pictures AND words.

Then, of course, Meredith started telling me all about each planet and how they were each different personalities.  (I didn't know this at the time, but this is another example of her object-personification synesthesia.)

First, there is Sunphie, the Sun. She is bossy and talks like a California teenager.  For example, she tells Vestean (Venus), "You should really get some life on your planet."  Vestean answers back, "Why don't YOU have life?"  Sunphie replies, "Because I'M smokin' hot!"

Mercury and Mars are brothers--Max and Mark Murcer.  Mark is always mad at Max because he copies him.

Earth is the Peacemaker and his name is Earthen.  He is SO happy all the time since he is the only planet with life.  Earth's Moon is kind of boring.  He says, "Hello...thank you for landing on my face."  He is sort of like a butler for Earthen.  But as he circles Earth, he moves close to Vestean who is always asking him for things when he passes by.

The funniest and most clever thing of all, to me, is that she said the stars are the paparazzi taking pictures of all the planets.  The stars' twinkling, of course, is the flash going off on their cameras.

Next comes sophisticated Jupiter whose name is SJ.  He says, "Hello, fellow citizens!"  The hurricane is his birthmark. Saturn is very mature, and Neptune is hyper, constantly saying, "Hi star, hi star, hi star..."

Poor Uranus is named Urinater and he always has to pee, as you can tell from the expression on his face.  Lastly, shy little Pluto is named Penelope Purple.  Everyone else calls her "Penelope P."

Meredith said she could talk about the Solar System for hours and hours, but of course that would bore everyone!

Taking Mental Pictures and Triggering Mental Slide Shows

Meredith says that she's been taking "pictures" ever since she can remember--that is, she takes a mental picture to remember something.   (To be more accurate, Merebith takes the picture with her camera as you probably guessed!)   It reminds me a lot of the children's book series, "Cam Jansen," where the main character is nicknamed "Cam" because she takes pictures of everything like a camera by blinking her eyes, which helps her in solving small mysteries.   Or on a grown up scale, I'm reminded of the new T.V. series, "Unforgettable," in which a detective uses her ability to remember everything she's seen and to take mental pictures of crime scenes to help solve crimes.  Maybe this ability to take pictures is more common than we realize.

One picture thinker I know defies the male stereotype by noticing any little difference in his house...like a new photo frame, a new pillow, or whether a knick knack moved to a new location.  He explains that all he does is compare the before and after pictures he has in his mind--like those "find the difference" games in magazines.

Apparently, some visual thinkers can combine all of these individual pictures (or "slides") to make up a slide show--sort of like swiping from photo to photo on an iPhone, only much, much faster.  If you saw the movie, "Temple Grandin," it would be very similar to the scene where she hears "shoes" and begins to see pictures of all the different kinds of shoes she's ever seen in a very fast slide show fashion. 

Here's an example of one of Meredith's slide shows.  We recently moved only two houses away from our old house.  A family with a young girl moved into our old house and Meredith often goes to play with her at her house.  Meredith says that everytime she enters the old house, all of her memories from living in that house start playing.  All 11 years of memories from that house!  She described the memories as slides that appear only for a nanosecond each, but all together, they last for about an hour.  She can't control it--it's an automatic response that goes from start to finish.  I asked Meredith if she can turn those pictures off, but she responded, "It's like putting a dollar in a vending machine. Once you put it in, you can't take it out." 

I assume this automatic memory response happens to most people, but on a smaller scale?  Like whenever I smell curry, I think of my trip to India.  But my memories are pretty vague and definitely don't appear as a slide show in my mind.  Or whenever I use my teaspoon set when cooking, I think of the different advice my mother and my best friend's mother gave me about whether to pour the ingredient into the teaspoon over the batter or over the sink.  But triggering 11 years of memories from start to finish every time you walk into a childhood home?  That's amazing.

I asked Meredith what her first memory in this slide show was, and she said it was coming in to the house for the first time...as a baby.  OK, this is where my radar goes up and it really is hard for me to believe that.  She said she remembers me looking at her with bags under my eyes (hmmm, maybe she does remember!) and she remembers her Dad gazing at her with the extreme love of a new father.  Lastly, she describes leaning over her crib and watching her drool drop down to the floor.  Who knows.  I do find it interesting that she wasn't describing memories as if she filled in the blanks after seeing baby pictures of herself.  She was describing things that she saw from her point of view. 

Ironically, as I'm sitting here writing this, Meredith and I were looking at this photograph of her on the bookshelf.  A company had come into her preschool (without the parent's prior knowledge) and dressed the kids up for these slightly over-the-top pictures.  Meredith started telling me how she was really upset that day because people were dressing her in different clothes--besides the cowboy getup, she said they dressed her in fairy wings.  Again, I had no knowledge of this because I never even knew that this was taking place.  She said they made her sit on a ladder in front of really dark background walls, and she just didn't like it.  The thing about this is that she was only 2 1/2 years old when that picture was taken.  I didn't really think it was possible to remember things from that young of an age.  So, maybe there is something to what she says... 

I would love to hear if anyone else can take mental pictures or has memories from a very young age--say under 3 years old.  Please share your stories!