Brown Friday

I've never heard of this before. Do you just associate colors with days of the week or do you feel compelled to wear the color for each day?

I've done this as long as I can remember. The days of the week don't have colors for me, but numbers correspond to people. 1 is a child, 2 is the mom, 3 is the dad, 4 is a shy woman, 5 is her strong husband, 6 is a large woman, 7 a tall thin man...and so on. I suspect everyone has a little of this, with something.

I've never heard of this. What's the word for someone who scrutinizes other people, thinking "Did he wear yellow LAST Wednesday? What's his Saturday color? Lavender? What does that say about him?"

Uh oh. I now have an entirely new way to psychoanalyze dates.

"Say, why do we only go out on Thursdays?"

"I'M WAITING FOR YOU TO TRIP UP."

Only when I have the mean reds.

I was all, yes join the crows feet gang....(I just got home and may have drunk too much wine). Anyway.....color? Where's the 'u'? Isn't it a requirement for you to spell it with a a 'u' since you're a Brit? (am I allowed to say it that way?)

I'm Canadian so I expect the 'u'.

Okay, as I said, maybe too much white wine.

holy crow's feet!
i sort of do that with numbers and associate them with a gender - like odd numbers are male and even numbers are female.

am i a synesthete? or just wired?

I'm a synaesthete too! I have spatial sequence synaesthesia and time-space synaesthesia, so I see days of the week, months of the year and numbers in a specific shape/pattern in my head. It's a really hard thing to explain to people who don't have it, but when you mention it to people who do it's great as they understand immediately and you aren't made to feel like a freak. I love it as it helps me to be super-organised, as it feels like I have a portable calendar in my head and I can always remember what stuff I've got planned.

They're carrying out a study at Edinburgh University (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8248589.stm) about synaesthesia and are finding that there is a link between it and remembering facts. That might explain why I'm such a pub quiz geek!

And Maddy - yes, there is a type of synaesthesia where numbers are associated with gender. It's called ordinal linguistic personification.

Friday is brown? I wish I had the ability to psychoanalyse that one. There's something there. I just know it. My seventh sense is on red alert!;-)

Btw,the number 3 has always been red for me.

You know, I didn't think that I did this, until I read, "Monday is blue" and I was like, "Nuh uh! That is not right. Monday is red!" So, I guess I do...

I don't do days as colors but I do assign gender to numbers. I never knew there was an actual name for that, I just thought I was a little odd.

i have low key synesthesia. some numbers have colors (and shapes) as do some months etc.
love reading these comments

I sex the colors. Red, orange, and purple, plus all derivatives of, are girls. Yellow, green and blue are boys. Black, white and gray are boys, too.

Helen, I do that too! But only with days of the week and months! Sometimes I'll be counting off the months and my finger will be pointing to where they are in my head, and people always think it's a little strange. For me, Jan-May are above eye level, June-Aug are right under May, Sept-Oct are in front of my eyes, Nov to the left and Dec under Jan. I love talking about this!

Okay, I clearly don't have this because I'm reading this comments and I'm all "huh? wha-huh? how? wha?" SO FASCINATED.

I'd heard about this before but never met a Synesthete until I was joking about this with my mild-mannered friend Ben. While I scoffed that, say, three could be blue, he quickly and vehemently corrected me that three was green. Whoa. Apparently all single-digit numbers have colors to him. Very cool. Numbers to me only produce anxiety about counting.

I was a psych major in college and we studied this. I don't really understand what it means for you functionally though. Like, what purpose are the colors?

I am shocked to find out that all people don't do this. I also assign gender and personalities to letters and numbers. Maybe some of this is leftover from the alphabet people in kindergarten (males were consonant and females were vowels which I thought was terribly unfair since there are WAY more consonants), but still. We must be the same type of people who make our pets talk in very distinctive manners (my cat is a southern belle with a potty mouth).

I don't do colours with days of the week but with cities. I've lived in 4 countries and travelled extensively so I have first hand experience of a lot of places. Every time a city is mentioned, I see a colour. I've long thought it odd and couldn't much explain it.... I lived in Sydney which is blue, Melbourne is a rust coloured orange.... (not meant to be disparaging to Melbourne :) ) Bangkok is black and white....

Wow, this is so interesting! I don't have colors for numbers or days of the week, but I do assign genders to cars based on the model of car and its color. I've told a friend that they picked the "wrong" name for their car before because they had picked a girl name when their car was CLEARLY a boy! My car, a white toyota corolla, is a girl.

I totally do this too! Associate words/letters/numbers with colors I mean. I totally thought it was normal until I was older because my brother does it too. It wasn't til I was in high school that I mentioned it to someone and they were like "um, what?"

Not to make you all self-conscious or feel like freaks but WHAT?

I'm sitting here reading through the comments and everyone has examples of how they have this trait and I'm TRYING to empathize but it is just not working for me. When I was a kid all my sentences had to contain a number of letters and spaces that divided neatly by 3, but I'm pretty sure that was some mild form of OCD.

Anyway...do you DRESS the color? Or specifically USE the color? Or does it just identify the day/number/etc in your brain?

Holly, I hate to burst the bubble, but as the mom of teenagers, they probably were talking about the schedule at school. Every other day is "red" or "blue" depending on which classes the kid has that day. Block scheduling. I now have a total of 15 high school years under my belt for four kids, and I STILL can't figure it out.

I totally do this! I do it with days of the week and numbers. Not all numbers though, just the ones from 1-10. My husband so totally doesn't get it.

OMG! I do this! Thursday has always been brown for me. So has the letter "D". For some reason, those two stick out in my mind as brown Brown BROWN!

Ha!

Happy Friday!

I'm going to be even more bubble-burst-y than Spinoff up there -- most thrift stores I know tag items with different color tags, and then either each week or even each month there's a color that's half-price. ;)

I don't have this, but I'm fascinated by it! I have slight OCD and have to do things in combinations of 3 (my husband is finally catching on that if he gives me a fry, he must give 3) but I've never heard of the color thing. Very cool!

Funny. My wv starts with 3.

Wow, I'm so glad I'm not alone in my freakishness. Lots of other synesthetes in the house!

Anyway, no, you don't DRESS the color on the day of the week (or at least I don't.) It just....is there in your brain when you think of the day. Like, if you say "let's go to a movie on Thursday," my brain will immediately see yellow because Thursday is yellow.

Also, Helen, I absolutely do the thing with picturing days and weeks and months and years in a physical space too. If I want to, I can see my whole week (or month or year) stacked up in front of me, and then zero in on a specific one from that. Like you say, it's just like having a portable calendar with you at all times! Had no idea this was part of synethsesia as well. Apparently, I am more of a hardcore synesthete than I first thought!

yeah! I do this too! Mostly with numbers and letters. A is red. B blue, C yellow, D brown. 5 is red, 2 is yellow. I hadn't thought about it with days of the week but I can see how Wednesday is red or orange. Friday is definitely yellow, though.

Funnily enough, I'm typing this in my dining room next to a Kandinsky print I need to put up. He was one of the most famous synesthetes.

Have you read Memory Artists by Jeffrey Moore? It's an interesting novel about synesthesia.

I have done this my entire life. I associate letters with colors AND (wait for it) cardinal directions. I KNOW. It makes no sense intellectually, but I've just grown used to it. East-West is also always associated with "cool colors" and North-South with "warm colors." A is an orange North-South letter, E is a blue East-West letter.

Have I sufficiently freaked everyone out now? Nice.

I had never heard of this but find it fascinating. Is it in any way related to one's tendency to be more left brained (analytical) or right brained (artistic)?

I do this all the time. I also have a strange good/bad feeling towards numbers/letters. I hate the number 9, 1, and 6. I used to get so angry at the letter M when I was little because it was bullying the letter N.

Read 'Born on a Blue Day.' Amazing.

And, Friday is GREEN. DUH.

Also, hilarious:
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/111808/synaesthesia-emergency.gif

Holly (and the rest of you) have you read the book "Born on a Blue Day" by Danile Tammet? http://www.amazon.com/Born-Blue-Day-Extraordinary-Autistic/dp/1416535071

He is an autistic savant who has your talent to the nth degree. Not only does he see days as colors, but numbers as shapes. He is extraordinarily gifted.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/story?id=2794451&page=1&page=1

I see words as people say them. And spell them, in my head. Often when I am not paying attention to my own actions, I'll catch my fingers typing out the words that other people are saying to match the picture of the word in my head. Wonder if there is a word for that, other than "weird"?

I don't have this at ALL. I'm definitely an auditory-orientation kind of gal and very rarely associate colors or shapes with anything that don't already have that color and shape. Abstract concepts like days of the week are full, sounded out words in my head. It makes me a slower thinker, I think. My brain is not very visually clever, perhaps, but it does have a lot of accents. :)

I associate colors with how I feel. sometimes I feel pink, or orange or blue. I haven't figured out if the colors correspond with specific feelings, but it's more of an instant association.

I think it happens most often when I'm relaxed or not distracted because I notice it mostly at night before I go to sleep.

I wish I did this! I mean, I see color a lot---with songs and such. But never days of the week. I think that's pretty awesome.

Okay, would it not be cool if we all associated the same colors with the same days? It would have to mean there was a higher power...or that the days actually did have colors.

Anyway, Holly, I agree with you on some of the days, but on the others you are wrong, wrong, wrong. For me, Monday is blue, Tuesday and Thursday are both green, Wednesday is red, and Friday is a greenish sort of brown (which sounds baby-poopish, but in my head the color's a lot deeper.) Saturday's yellow (as in yay-happy-yellow!), and Sunday doesn't have a color.

One of those things I've always known, but never really thought about till now...

Ha, we have two the same. Monday is green, Tuesday is red, Wednesday is brown, Thursday is yellow, Friday is blue, Saturday is white, and Sunday is pink.

I also randomly assign gender to things. For example, all cats are girls and all dogs are boys. I know they're not, but they are. Hamsters are boys, guinea pigs are girls. Horses are boys, deer are girls. Seals are boys, birds are girls.

Explaining this makes me feel like I'm a nutter.

Elizabeth Joy, apparently a lot of synesthetes see the same days as the same colors -- not all of them, obviously (as we're learning in the comments!) but there's enough of a trend to make it noticeable. Crazy, huh?

And now I'm reading through the comments, and I totally do the picturing time and days and whatnot. Except I just thought everyone did that. Now I feel even nuttier.

I have never ever heard of that. How weird.

If I did do that, Friday would be something bright and fun! Not boring brown. Although with the way the last few hours of work have dragged, it has definitely been like an old, brown cow.

I don't even know what that means.

I do the same with dates. I didn't know that wasn't normal until i read the bbc article! and when i tried to tell my friends about it they looked at me like i was crazy! i see the year as sort of a square, with december in the top right, march in the top left, june in the bottom left and september in the bottom right. the article also explained why i have such a good memory for dates and things like that (another annoying thing when you're the only one who can remember things!)

Synesthesia is also a literary term, which I'm sure you already knew, but I taught it to my students last month. I have the non-literary synethesia, too, but in my case it's not days of the week; it's months. January is a minty green month, December is light blue, November is forest green, and so on. Glad to hear I'm not the only one with this problem!

Last week on our National Radio they were talking to a researcher about this, it was so fascinating! I absolutely don't do it but I wish I did ever since I first heard about it a couple years ago. I can't even fool myself into thinking I do sadly. I think the researcher said up to 20% of the population has synesthesia to some degree, mostly on the low end of the scale like the commenters above. One guy he studied felt flavours as shapes and couldn't rest until the shape of the food (like round with spikes on it) was how he wanted it. So cool.

I don't have this but I've heard of it before and I think it's cool! I'd like to have it... when I was in music school people talked a lot about how notes, chords or particularly keys have a specific color but I've never really had that. SO fascinating!

Katelar, I do that too! I see words as I speak them! I am SO excited you said that. I always thought I was just really weird. I see the words really clearly in my head, when I speak them and when others say them. So it bugs me when people use a word I can't spell or don't know, because I can't see it properly. It also mystifies me when people have really bad spelling skills, because how do they SPEAK with all those blank spaces in their heads where the words should be, because they can't see them spelled properly?

My boyfriend and I read this post, and neither of us do the color/shape thing, but I told him about my weird spelling thing and he thought I was crazy. He was like "um, what font is it in?" And I thought about it, and...Times New Roman. Yeah.

I also do the typing thing, sometimes subconsciously but sometimes when I'm bored. I try not to actually move my fingers too much because I would probably look crazy. But I see the words in my head pretty much always.

Wow, I've heard never of that!
And the first thing I thought of, since you were at the thrift store, is that my thrift store has different colored days where things with that color dot on the label are on sale. Maybe it was that?
Umm not to be a total party pooper though!

I've done this since I was a kid, but didn't know the term synesthesia until about 8 years ago. A few years ago, my friend Sarah knitted me a scarf with each stripe representing a digit of pi in the color I saw it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahbrown/426081296/

Nope,
Never heard of this, although I do find it completely fascinating.

HOWEVER, I also do the spelling out the words thing like Katelar. And have been known to type with my fingers whilst in conversation with others.

Very odd.

i love the idea of colors associated with days of the week, but could the youths have been referring to the day of the week and which color tag was discounted that day? at my local salvation army store, yellow tags have an extra discount on tuesday, for example - red on wednesday, blue on thursday, etc. ...

i guess this proves i am not a synesthete - just a bargain-hungry shopper!

I have never heard of assigning colors to days before. That is bizarre!

I do picture calendars in my head and that's how I keep my schedule. But I figure that is just part of my Type A planner-organizer-slightly OCD personality.

Yes! I've always done this. I also see days of the week and months of the year spatially, which is a little more common. But dude, the people who *taste* music and numbers and words -- those people have some seriously crazy neuro-wiring happening.

Once when I was in sixth grade, I asked a friend what color her call waiting beep was. I think that's when she decided she didn't want to be friends with me anymore.

Wow, very cool! I've never heard of that or done that!

BUT I do see words in my head like Katelar, Jamie, and Stephanie. I just learned my sister does this as well.

Yes I am so with you! Wednesday is yellow in my mind. Thursday is orange, Monday blue, Tuesday red and Friday green! I wonder if this all stems from what colors our kindergarten teachers used on the calendars??

Is it possible that you were at a Salvation Army, or some other thrift store that also puts colored tages on all the clothes, and each week picks a particular color to sell at 50% off their already low-low prices? I mention this because last night I hit the red tag jackpot, and want everyone to know - sack of work clothes for $9!

I quickly learned that there is a major difference between "thrift" store and "consignment" store.

Yay! Kindred spirits! I see the months (and weeks within them) in a particular pattern. Mine's more of a square with rounded off corners. Hard to describe. I also see the alphabet in a particular orientation. And, now that Jamie and Katelar mention it, I realize that I see words when people speak them (and if I'm bored, I type them). So nice to know I'm not the only one. :) Not sure I've ever confessed this to my husband...might make for interesting dinner conversation.

Some of my favorite people are synesthetes! I should have known you were one too.

Ok, so I had a really great date last night, and on my way to the date, I thought, "Hey! I'll use Holly's synthesete story as a conversation icebreaker! Won't that be a fascinating conversation!"

Turns out, he has a very dear friend who has it, and wrote this interesting essay on it - http://www.otherthings.com/uw/syn/

Check it out!

Thanks for all the great stories, photos, and giggles. You rock!

I do this with peoples' names, e.g. jeremy is dark green, john is yellow, david is blue, colin is green, jennifer is a kind of mustard colour... also I see numbers as shapes, and do my mental arithmetic by tesselating the shapes.

I have time-space synesthesia. The months of the year form an oval loop and I'm standing at late December. The long ends are July and December, some are thin some are fat, and they have colors. The days of the weeks are walls.