Do You Have This "Disorder"?

Your name tastes like purple

This post originally appeared on the blog Persephone Magazine.
By Teri Floyd

In my head, the letter "N" is green. The number 5 is blackish gray, and in his early 20s. The month of February is lavender colored and covered in ice.

So in case you haven’t guessed, I have synesthesia.


I’ve had it all my life, I suppose. People who are experts on such things say that we are born with it, that it is a brain disorder. The wires in your brain get crossed, and you experience all five senses simultaneously. They overlap where they should be separate.


Everybody who has it has a different form of synesthesia with minor undertones of other kinds. Mine mainly exists with letters and numbers. I see numbers, letters, words, etc in color. All of my letters and numbers have different colors, personalities, textures, ages and gender. I literally see them as living beings. Colors themselves also have gender. When I was a child often I’d play ‘house’ with my crayons instead of dolls. Seriously, I’d have red and blue get married or green and orange have a sordid affair. My grandma used to think it was so funny. It was just normal to me. Words have colors – for instance, my son’s name, Callum, is a bright, sunny yellow with flecks of baby blue, particularly in the L’s.

the rest of the article:
http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/08/6012301-your-name-tastes-like-purple
Actually, I'd consider it a treasured gift!  When I was little I remember specifically assigning colors to numbers and the word for the number like, blue and green make nine. Blue is five and green is four and the word nine is 4+5. I figured it was just childhood imagination. Now I'm going to pay attention next time one of those color/number/smell combos pops into my brain and see what I can remember. This guy is so lucky!I wonder how many writers have synethesia? How many people with writing potential?