Noticing and thinking about small things

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This is not simply about grammar, but e.g. I remember as a child noticing a schoolmate biting her lip, resulting in a visible crack, and then not doing the same thing myself as it looked unattractive.

Do you notice any such small things (and does anyone know if NTs do this frequently too)?

All the time.

I notice small things too. Luckily as a woman this can work in my favour. I'm the first person to notice if a co-worker has styled her hair differently, or is wearing a different shade of lipstick. So then I can say 'Your hair looks very nice, have you styled it differently?' and then they feel happy that someone has noticed and then they talk about their hair for a bit and I don't have to say anything.

I thought NTs were better at this than Aspies were. That is why people stare at me funny, I know I'm not doing anything noticably unusual (I do know because I have full self-awareness to the extent NTs have), but people still seem to notice any tiny, microscopic details about me that might be a teeny bit different, from how my clothes are to how I stand. If my little finger is sticking out, they notice and stare at me and non-verbally ridicule me as if there were no tomorrow. I don't notice tiny, trivial differences on other people, only big differences that are attention-grabbing, like if somebody was dressed in a chicken suit or were waving their arms about for no reason or something. I don't even notice if somebody's coloured their hair or put a bit of weight on, whereas I hear other people talking all the time about how they notice so-and-so's hair has changed or so-and-so's put on a bit of weight or so-and-so's not wearing any make-up today, et cetera.

I do notice small things and details. A random example of this was when I was about 11 and I was in the car with my friend and I saw a mouse scurrying on the road. I pointed it out and everybody was surprised that I noticed it. I'm just very observant and detail oriented.

When I was really small (about 5) I told my parents that I kept seeing a little creature in the kitchen. My family put it down to an over active imagination (despite the fact that I don't really have an imagination), at least until they looked in the larder and realised that a mouse had been in there, eating all the food.

I notice small movements very well.

I am the same way, which is why some people act like I create non-existing problems. However, I work in a profession that requires a detailed oriented mind so it tends to work in my favor.

I am also in a detail-oriented occupation.
I had an art class in college where we had to make "gesture drawings". The instructor would strike a pose and we had 20 seconds to draw him--the whole person. Everyone else in the class managed to quickly sketch his whole body but for some reason, I never could get past his left eyelid.

I do this, I think about a big picture, like our Universe as it is now, then I mentally visualize going backwards in time like a third person / god view and watch as it all gets broken down to it base elements. Then I press play and watch as it starts from the beginning moving forward. Watching as everything starts to coalesce, imagining the pressures, temperatures, speed, trajectory, chemical reactions, gravitational forces, the EVOLUTION of everything.

One of my favorite safe places. I'll zone out to this all the time, thanks to science and having read all of the internet, I can visualize this very well.

Or I'll get interested in how fractals effect very small things, from leaves to quantum chromodynamics. Then I'll think how these things interconnect very large things, like humans, buildings etc.

Or atomic/sub-atomic materials science: Carbon nano tubes, graphene buckyballs etc.

Those moments are one of the things I like about being this way. The smiley face in the speed limit sign, the squirrel draging a pear across a busy highway, little stuff like that. It's like a little secret world that nobody else gets to see.

And if we tried to explain it to them, it would take half an hour, both parties would be frustrated and the NT person still wouldn't understand......

Wait... Not everyone notices these things? Oh. XD Well then yes, this is something I relate to. I always thought everyone was like this, but I guess I just thought that because I am like this.

All the time, and if there was a coffee table with a pen on top of a piece of paper on it right in front of me, a person could tell me to hand them that pen on the coffee table, and it would take me 20 minutes to find it

Yeah, it's only been recently that I really realized that not everyone notices the sort of things I notice. It's certainly one thing I wouldn't want to change.

I detail cars for a living and I seem to be able to spot small scratches and dents much easier than others.
I love being able to notice things right away that others don't at first.

I tend to notice small details that NTs don't notice.

Once at an office birthday party, someone was trying to get the birthday boy to reveal his age. When I got tired of hearing it, I correctly calculated his age. The other parties were amazed. When I pointed out that he had verified that someone else had turned 50 just earlier that year, before announcing that he was the eldest, so he must be 51, my coworker commented "she does that".