5 Positive Things About Me

I've been tagged twice, so here goes.

This is going to be tough because so many things I like about myself are mixed emotions types of things.  Also, the ones that aren't tend to make me sound egotistical.  With that in mind:

1) I learn things very quickly, but only after I figure out their pattern.  Before that I just don't retain information well.  That used to drive teachers nuts because I didn't seem to be learning anything and then suddenly something would click and I would just know the stuff. 

2) I have an off-the-wall sense of humor.  I don't let it get out much because most people don't know quite how to take it. For example, one of my friends was an engineering student and he had to take a required English class.  He hated it, so the two of us would get together before class and figure out ways to torture the poor teacher.  The teacher assigned short stories with a lot of obscure symbolism and 'deep meaning'.  We would figure out what the story was really about, and then figure out an alternate, totally ridiculous meaning that could be supported by the story.  In class, my friend would (with a perfectly straight face) mention the real meaning in passing, then say something like "But I think the real point of this story is:(insert ridiculous explanation here)."

We had to walk a fine line here so that the teacher was 90% sure we were messing with him, but not 100%.  We also had to find enough stuff in the story to make the point arguable.  Then of course one of my friends other friends started coming to class early and playing hangman with him on the board, always with the same word.  This sort of thing wouldn't have worked with some teachers, but this one had a sense of humor and recognized that my friend really was reading and
thinking about the stories.

3) I'm good at picking up patterns and oddities in data or situations.  I can look at a sea of numbers and say, "This one is either wrong or important."  I usually am almost certain that it is wrong or that it is important.  In some cases I can look at a person and immediately say "Watch out for this guy." I'm not good at figuring out that for women though.

4) I'm creative to the point that if I had 3 or 4 lifetimes I would never be able to write up even half of the good ideas I have for stories.  That sounds egotistical, but it's actually somewhat of a curse because it is difficult to focus on one book long enough to finish it when I keep coming up with new ideas that really excite me.

5) I'm good at tapping into my intuition.  There are times that I will know something and have no idea how I knew it.  Sometimes my wife half-seriously accuses me of reading her mind.  There is nothing mystical about this.  My subconscious just sees things that I don't see consciously.  Oddly, that was a major help back when I was a computer programmer.  If I ran into a problem I  couldn't figure out I would often do something apparently random and it would almost always lead to an answer to the problem.  The only explaination I can think of is that there are parts of my brain that I can't tap into directly, but in these cases they already knew what the problem was.

Okay, by now I probably sound like an egotistical mystic type.  Oh well.   I'll stop now.