Jeff Grossman wrote:I am fascinated by those associations. What are the other six colors matched to the days of the week? Can you predict what colors will occur with a given thing or are you just along for the ride?
Just along for the ride. The color-associations are non-sensical. Obviously I assigned them, but involuntarily at a subconscious level. They're not my favorite colors (in fact, I hate some of them) nor are all colors represented (no purple, no turquoise/acqua, no lime green) and some colors occur more than once in different shades. I can't change the colors, they're in for life.
The days of the week are Monday = white, Tuesday's a dull almost burnt shade of orange, Wed = emerald, Thursday = raspberry red, Friday = blue, Saturday = brown, Sunday = yellow. Months of the year include three shades of green for March, May and August, two of which match up to the traditional birthstone for that month. That's probably not a coincidence but most don't have a match. July and the letter 'J' are both the same disgusting shade of pink. You'd think for my own name I'd pick great colors, but no.
Exceptional memory is common in synesthetes. But that said, by and large the strings of numbers I remember are black and white. They only get lit up when they're personal. When we moved here, the phone company would only give me three choices for a phone number. I called back three days in a row before they offered me a number I liked. What makes a number likable? Just a pleasing bouquet of colors. Our previous phone number in Huntington Beach was 840-6761 (black/green/white - brown dark yellow brown light yellow). And annoyed the heck out of me having cold colors on one side of the hyphen and warm on the other.
But that number had a nice cadence. Cadence matters a lot in how I remember all the phone numbers of my childhood. Each is like a little song. I grew up with 69-67731. The Mierases were 69-87093, the Zishkas 69-37093, the Corbetts 69-36252, etc. I put the hyphen where I do because all those numbers were originally expressed as Oxbow. We were Oxbow 67731 until the phone company turned OX into numbers and moved the hyphen. In my head each of those had a singular tone. Put to music, our phone number would have been GDGAAEC.
When we get a new credit card (we use one card fairly exclusively but it gets hacked at least once a year these days so new numbers come frequently), I'm always excited to see what the numbers are. Sometimes I like them, sometimes I don't--and it shouldn't matter one damned bit, they're just numbers. BUT--I hate an ugly number.
Some synesthetes only assign letters, some only numbers--this is a very common form--but everything including the calendar (like me) is more unusual. Btw, I thought I was the only person in the world like this until I saw a show on PBS about it. Was wild after living with this so long to find out there were others like me, that it's a neurological bonus, and that we had a name.
A friend of mine, a trumpet player and fellow synaesthesiast, assigned colors to musical notes and instruments. Some people assign colors to food--thank god I don't!
Way more than you wanted to know, I'm sure.
