Texty, texty rainbows.
I know I've talked to several of you about this, but it's something that most people do without really thinking about it, and there isn't a lot of discussion about it outside of scientific journals and studies. Synaesthesia in colored letters and numbers is a lot more common than the famous cases of mixing of sounds/tastes/sensations, so I'm sure there are more than a few of you out there that have it. For such a huge part of everyday life, it's surprisingly undiscussed. In that way it's kind of like picking your nose; everyone does it, and most of the time without thinking too much, but it's rarely a conversation-opener when someone asks about your weekend. So I'm here and asking about it. I want to know what you do.
Here are some of the things I do:
First of all, here is how I see letters and numerals. I also do it for days of the week, months of the year, cardinal directions, left and right, parts of my body, and pretty much anything categorized. Not anything musical, though; I don't know much music theory and don't play any instruments, so music is the same as looking at any colorless alphabet of a language I don't know.
Sometimes (as you can see by the dates, I haven't done this in years) I like to put a blank alphabet in Photoshop and color the letters the way I see them. I'm surprised at how identical some of the shades are, even though I had no concrete reference. It's also cool to see how the colors are overall darker when I did it in a bad mood.
I also get personalities for all the colors, letters, and numbers, which I hear is fairly common. I didn't make these up at any point- they're just what the alphabet "came with." Writing out the personalities would take a long time, but here are the genders at least:
LETTERS
A- female
B- female
C- male
D- male
E- male
F- male
G- female
H- male
I- female
J- male
K- female
L- female
M- female
N- female
O- male
P- female
Q- female
R- male
S- female
T- male
U- female
V- male
W- male
X- female
Y- male
Z- female
COLORS
Red- male
Orange- male
Yellow- male
Green- male
Blue- female
Violet- female
NUMBERS
1- neuter
2- female
3- male
4- female
5- male
6- male
7- female
8- female
9- male
0- male
DAYS OF THE WEEK
Monday- female
Tuesday- varies
Wednesday- female
Thursday- male
Friday- male
Saturday- female
Sunday- male
DIRECTIONS
North- female
South- varies
East- male
West- male
When I was in elementary school it would take me a very long time to do standardized tests because I would get distracted by the letters on the bubble-answer sheet, and feel bad for the letters that weren't getting their share of filled-in bubbles. "A" was a spunky girl and "C" was a well-meaning, decent guy, and I felt like they deserved the bubbles, but I had a hard time filling in bubbles for "B" (a dowdy housekeeper I felt I had nothing in common with), and "D" was just plain old, mustache-twirling evil and always trying to put one over on the other three.
As a child I would also "bring toys with me" in the form of anything colored, like pencils, crayons, or even plastic beads, or numbers written on a piece of paper if I got desperate. That way, even if I was stuck somewhere boring, I could have a whole menagerie of already-embellished personalities to work with. I never explained any of this to my parents- they probably thought I was autistic.
Uh... I don't expect any of you to join me *exactly* on any of this, but I think it would be pretty cool if you experienced anything similar.
Another thing is I like to arrange my alphabet into rainbow order, or use letters to "color in" a picture if I only have a pencil.
I'm thinking of painting my keyboard opaque colors to totally confound anyone outside my brain who doesn't know how to touch-type. I've already owned a keyboard where all the letters got rubbed off from years of use, though, so maybe that's repeating myself.
Games I play when I'm in line or on hold or waiting for someone, or on a bus:
-I try to go through the alphabet by looking around for each letter until I find the exact hue on the side of a house, or in a car, or somewhere in my environment, then I move on to the next one.
-I try to count backwards from 99 without using numbers. Each 99, 88, 77, 66, etc is an explosion of that numeral’s particular color, and the mixed-numeral numbers work by introducing each new splash of the ones-digit diegetically onto the background provided by the tens-digit. For example, 63 is brown dirt with green leaves curling up from it. At 62, blue berries sprout out on the leaves and drop down to the dirt, leaving only the 6 and 2 colors in frame. At 61, beige roots sprout from the berries and soar down into the brown. 60 is when they hit clear rock, press, and shatter it to reveal 59, a golden layer of sand with little flecks of brown-black embedded in it. At 58, we see a red worm inching into frame. It gives birth to bright yellow larvae, 57, still against that golden background. The larvae turn into little, brown (56) cocoons. And so on.
-When I'm walking, I try to read signs that are very far away. I can sometimes get it right on the edge of where my eyes can actually see words, and it's cool to note that the colors kick in before the actual letters do. I know it's just a weird quirk in my visual processing, since obviously I'd have to be able to read the letter before my brain could tell me what color it was, but at some distances I can actually see a little blur of color *before* I can read what word it is, and so I can make out signs from further than I can read, just by color.
Okay. That's it for me. Please, please share what you do! I'm totally fascinated and I can't wait to hear what kinds of crazy shit goes on in your brain.