Synesthesia

I have what is called synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon whereby senses and/or cognitive functions are "linked" or "cross-wired" in some way. I have the most common form where letters & numbers each have an associated color.

Here is approximately what my alphabet "looks" like:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
A B C D E F G H I J K L M
N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I say approximately because I do not "see" the colors with my eyes. When reading a book, I see black ink on a white page just like everyone else. But the letter F, for instance, is just a blue letter. To get a sense of what this means, try the following experiment. Let's try switching the letters F and M in the alphabet. Now quick, pronounce the following words: mathof, fofent, limt, elm. If that was hard, it's probably because in your head, the letter F always has a certain sound, and the letter M always has a certain sound. You don't actually "hear" these sounds when you see the letter written on the page; each letter just "has" an associated sound. Same with synesthesia -- each letter just "has" an associated color.

I actually knew of synesthesia for about a year before I realized I had it. My parents were telling me about someone they knew who could see letters in color, and could use that ability to remember spellings. I took this to mean that she physically "saw" the colors, and so I didn't really give it a second thought. Then one day in 11th grade math class, while the teacher had written f(x) on the blackboard, I thought to myself, "I think I like the letter F so much because it's such a nice shade of blue." I never connected it with this synesthesia story until I talked to my parents about it and was shocked that not everyone knew that F was blue.

Looking back, I can now remember synesthetic associations I had as a child. I remember thinking of Ivan Lendl as the tennis player with a green name (because of the two L's), and liking the rich brown color of my favorite number (12). These associations were so natural to me, why would I have thought they were strange or noteworthy at the time?

Having letters & numbers in color is usually pretty helpful. It really helps in remembering names & spellings, and memorizing numbers. But when a word starts with a letter that has a less intense color, I can never remember it. However, now that I'm aware of this, I know that if I can't remember a word or name, chances are it starts with C or L. A great frustration for me was the bus route system when I lived in Champaign, Illinois; they give each bus route a number and color, but the pairings "5-Green" and "6-Orange" that they chose are completely backwards to me! I had to remind myself to concentrate really hard whenever I needed to go home on the 5-Green route.

Another strange thing I've noticed is that 4, 5, 6 & 8 are colored (more or less) like standard pool balls, but this is just a really bizarre coincidence.

Take a look at Wikipedia's main article on synesthesia, and another on the more specific grapheme-color variant. These wikipedia articles used to be pretty bad, but they are in the process of being cleaned up by some well-respected psychologists who study synesthesia. I also recommend Cassidy's synesthesia page. He does a great job of explaining the complicated way in which the overall color of a word is affected by the colors of each of the letters. Of course, his colors are ridiculous -- a bright blue M? ;)