So, ever since I was little I have seen different numbers as distinct colors. Not like in real life, it’s not like I’ll see numbers as different colors on a sheet of paper. But in my head, when I imagined them, most numbers had (and still do have) a distinct color. The same applies, much more vaguely, to letters. I never thought much of it until when I was 8 or 9 my parents were talking about a news article that was talking about people just like me!
And it turns out I’m not crazy! It’s called synesthesia, and tons of people have it with various degrees of extremities. I only see the colors in my head, when I imagine a number. But some people actually see the numbers and letters change color on a piece of paper as they draw them. It all has to do with some neural-this and electron-that connections in the brain that somehow gets mixed up, so some people associate certain symbols with certain colors. Wikipedia has the big-word answer if you want.
Usually the colors are different in every person. But not always. For instance, I have a friend who also has a mild form of synesthesia. About half the numbers we totally agree on (”Yeah! 7 is so firery-orange colored!”) and about half are so totally off. (”What are you talking about? 5 is the definition of blue!”) Here’s an approximation of how I personally see the first few numbers in my head:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Beyond that, any other color would just be a combination of the other few numbers. It’s not as obvious as it is on the page above in my head, it’s much more vague. But it’s there. With letters it’s much tougher. Letters like A are easy just by being pure red. E and F are two slightly different shades of green, D is a sort of light navy blue. But the colors sort of fade with most of the other letters farther along in the alphabet.
Okay, now here’s the crazy thing. It has to do with the Lost DVD set. I had always thought that the colors for the DVD cases for each season matched the seasons well for some reason, but it had never really occurred to me why. Then, recently, I realized. They matched almost exactly what I consider the colors of 1-4 to be. Season 1 was a light blue, season 2 a dark red-ish color, season 3 green, and season 4 blue!
Okay, so sure – season 2 is more of an orange color than red, but aside from that this follows my idea of what each number should be exactly. It’s most likely just a coincidence, as most people with Synesthesia don’t share the same colors with each other, but still a very interesting finding. Also, the fact that the upcoming Season 5 DVD is not yellow as it obviously should be, proves this is all probably me just getting excited about nothing. But still!
Do you have Synesethia? There must be more people out there who have this, however mildly.
P.S. Speaking of Lost – holy moly on that finale. Locke is dead. Again.
