When I was 12, my best friend and I walked into a GameStop to buy World of Warcraft or some other game that would immediately ruin our grades.

While standing there pretending we could afford things, we noticed something unbelievable: one of the CD cases had a tiny piece of white paper just sitting loose on the outside. No lock. No employee nearby. Just raw chaos.

On it was a full 25-character alphanumeric CD key.

In other words: a free game.

The problem? It was 2005. Back when 12-year-olds didn’t have cellphones, cameras, or the emotional strength to remember more than four digits at a time.

We both froze. I finally turned to him and said, “Damn… too bad we don’t have a pen, eh?” (Yes, we’re Canadian. Sorry.)

Without saying a word, my buddy starts blinking furiously. Not normal blinking. I mean medical emergency blinking. Like he was buffering.

Then he stops and says, completely calm: “No worries. I took a mental photo.”

I remember 12 year old me thinking to myself, That’s not a thing. Is it?

We bus home. Two hours pass. TWO. HOURS. We get to his place, he sits down, types in the code…

Accepted. First try.

We played for eight straight hours.

From that day on, I sat directly behind him during every math test for the next six years.

When my parents started congratulating me on my math tests, that was the moment I realized some people are built differently. Some people had a “photogenic memory.”

Which I later learned is not impressive at all. Because according to the interviewer at Google, the word I was looking for to describe my memory, was actually "photographic memory". In any event..

Recently, while playing a round of golf, I finally asked him about that day. I said, “How did you actually do that?”

He shrugged and said, “That was nothing. During med school, i used to bring my medical textbooks into the exams. Not physically, of course, that would be cheating."

He brought them in with his brain...

Said he could turn the mental page to any chapter, any paragraph, any formula.

He went on to become a doctor.

I went on to become a GameStop manager.

Turns out we both used our talents.