So my parents aren't musicians but my mom tells me she used to obsessively play classical music a bunch while she was pregnant with me. I didn't touch a keyboard until I was 6 or 7. Anyway, now I'm 20 and I've been doing music stuff for like 10+ years with few lessons(or direction) but I know middle "C" indefinitely. And because I know "C" i can figure out every other note too(maybe I'm not explaining this right) my point is i can figure out any notes to a thing as long as I think from "C" first. I explained this to my teacher and he was like "that's perfect pitch" but I always thought perfect pitch was effortless.
right. you have a very effective and wily workaround, which i have as well