Anecdotal Evidence

I've noticed something interesting about myself and a couple of other past aquaintances who all have cerebral palsy to varying degrees, but have no matching mental deficits. (we all grew up prior to personal computing, speech recognition, word boards or other similar assistive devices.)

We all had similar stories that once school got hard enough to take notes we tried. And tried.
And tried. And then partially gave up...we couldn't take notes fast enough to write everything down.

We all also have pretty sharp memories. Some of my able bodied relatives once said to me, "How *is* it that you remember all this stuff?" and I (and my past aquaintances) are astonished at how much "the rest of them" seem to forget completely.

We all talked this out and came to the conclusion that we might have unwittingly "trained" our memories to pick up the slack when we couldn't keep up the pace of the written notes...

One former aquaintance has/had a nearly eidetic memory, calling up conversations and passages from books word for word...which made it excruiciating to argue with them, because all the past exchanges were it seems, neatly filed away in that head to be used if needed.

The downside of this of course is that if you aren't used to detailed notetaking or shorthand, but need it in your work, it's difficult to try to teach yourself something new during midlife

I am a former singer and music lover, and even there...I have pitch, I learn very quickly by ear, but reading music is just a forest of dots to me. I have to hear it and store it in my head to reproduce it correctly.

Anyone else out there with writing limitations and a sharp mind notice a similar experience?

I'd be interested to know.