What do you feel to be your best autism trait?

[Pats]

I think for me it would be how I see things. While driving through the Canadian Rockies everyone else in the van questioned how is it that I am the one spotting animals off in the distance and I'm the one driving. Of course, at the time I was like, I don't know.
My daughter in law and I love going to Goodwill and second hand stores looking for new projects and she's always asking "how did you spot that thing on bottom of a pile?"
As we got to discussing and comparing how we see things I realized that I seen things differently than she did (she's NT). The animals popped out at me because they were a change in a pattern per se. When looking at things outside of driving my vision is focused in a smaller area than hers allowing me to see more detail.
Of course, this has fall backs, too, because when I'm talking to someone I look into one eye and I don't see the face. I learned to look into eyes during my speech therapy and they had me practice having staring contests with my brother and I got really good. Maybe too good because I've have people have to look away from me before. It probably feels like a staring contest. But when I look at something I don't see the things around it and when there's the tiniest break in a pattern or scenery it gets my attention. I used to always wonder when I was driving to work why I always looked at the same things. I even tested myself once and deliberately looked in the other direction and for a second I felt lost cause it was not familiar at all. The same things would stand out to me every time, I guess.
But I like this trait now that I know it's not how everyone sees things because I AM able to pick things out better and see things they don't. They see a boring whole and miss the things I see.

 

[Gritches]

I like my ability to spot idiosyncrasies; being able to tell when something's not quite right has helped me avoid numerous dangerous situations in the past, and saved my life more than a few times.

 

[Nervous Rex]

I enjoy my ability to analyze any system of rules and quickly start seeing all the variations that system of rules produces. It makes me good at math, programming, and game playing, all of which I really enjoy. When I know the rules of a system well enough, I don't even have to think about a problem - I spend enough time to understand the problem, then go do something else while my subconscious processes it. After some time (sometimes days, sometimes minutes), suddenly I just know the answer. It totally feels like cheating.

However, it also means I see all the ways that sets of rules can be abused. I don't ask to know these things and I don't want to use them, but out of nowhere, suddenly I know how someone unethical could abuse the system. I have sat in business meetings and church meetings with serious and somber leaders, and just blurted out how someone could abuse the company performance incentive, the work-allocation rules between departments, the church's financial system, the boy scout enrollment program, etc. And I get such wide-eyed stares. And all I can say after that is, "Sooooo ... you might want to watch for that, I guess..."

 

[Noelle]

I'm very calculating. This is my best and worst ASD trait.

 

[Progster]

I think that my best traits are attention to detail, good long term memory, and ability to see things objectively without emotional judgement.

 

[SusanLR]

Long term memory and always noticing and seeing things that others don't seem to notice.
I can be driving and see birds overhead, rabbits, squirrels and little things like frogs sitting on the sidewalk.
What signs say/billboards and such. Flowers, yard ornaments. Hyper-aware.
People in the car are amazed at how I see such little things all the time.
Sometimes it's like it makes them angry because they didn't see it.
They almost have an attitude that if they didn't see it, it wasn't so. Like I lied?

 

[Nihil]

Introspection. At the same time, it's possible to do too much introspection.

 

[garnetflower13]

I often see things or hear things that others do not, and then I am looked at askance. But on the other hand, I see many interesting or pretty things that go unnoticed by others, so there is a plus. Once it was funny - i was about to get into my friend's car, when I saw a huge spider run across the back seat and disappear somewhere on the floor of the car. I told her, but she hadn't seen it so didn't believe me. We drove to a store parking lot, and she was about to get out of the car when the spider surfaced, and then ran very close to her leg. How she screamed!