I Have Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.

In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme → color synesthesia or color-graphemic synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored, while in ordinal linguistic personification, numbers, days of the week and months of the year evoke personalities.

My oldset sister has this condition as does a great neice. 

I personally enjoy the addition of colors to days of the week, months, and certain conditions. It is normal to me. 

July 14, 2006 I wrote this:

COLORS OF THE WEEK


I associate colors with the days of the week. I have done this all my life.

Back in college I wrote a paper on this subject and received a B-. I think the professor thought I was a nut.

Ever since then, I have kept this color association a secret. I figured that this concept, if made public, would be the final straw for some adult to commit me to a mental institution. 

Some days colors are constant like Wednesday. Wednesday has been a yellow day all my life.

Thursday has always been uniquely amber. No other day has ever been amber.

In fact, most days are confined to several basic colors blue, green, yellow, and red with an occasional but rare mix if the day is changing colors.

There are no rules to the colors; it’s just what I mentally see. The colors rarely change but can change over time.

Now the weird part of the story just in case you didn’t think this was creepy enough.

Two years ago at a crowded family Christmas dinner, my oldest sister Etta somehow starts talking about how she associates colors with the days of the week. 

I jumped in and said I too have colors for each day of the week. My nephew Tom thought this was absurd and accused of rehearsing this routine for after dinner family entertainment.

As soon as Etta and I realized we had the same associations we started blurting out the colors. All days matched exactly with Wednesday and Thursday being exactly the same constant and the exact same color.

I wonder how our brains got wired this way?

This association skipped Judy the middle child. 

Color Key

Monday – Turquoise (currently, I think this day is changing colors)
Tuesday – Green (Currently and most often but sometimes yellow)
Wednesday – Always Yellow
Thursday – Always Amber (more of the color of tea)
Friday – Yellow (currently)
Saturday – Blue (currently)
Sunday – Yellow (currently)

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5 comments:

Ken said...

Is it OK for me not to wear blue?

Judy said...

Did you answer Julia's questionaire on this. She is doing a paper on this at school. I always felt like something was wrong with me because I didn't see things like that in color. I tried my best to!

Reggie Hunnicutt said...

The older I get the more I associate colors with things or events. The thought of St Croix is yellow while Southport is brown. Horse feed is green even though it is actually brown. I see brown but think green.

Unknown said...

If you had been born 300 years ago you may have been a shaman.

terri said...

I've never heard of Synesthesia. This is fascinating!