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What Color is Your Wednesday? Ask Yourself These Questions
Days and months are tinged with color when you have this kind of Synesthesia
I have always loved calendars.
When I was a child, I couldn’t wait to get to sixth grade. I knew that every month, the teacher, Mrs. Pollack, would assign homework to draw a calendar that combined math problems with art. So every month, I would get to draw a calendar and decorate it with colors and pictures to match the month.
For some, this meant themed calendars around the holidays, such as Christmas or Valentine’s Day. And sure, I made those kinds of calendars. But in my mind, there was also an extra element I needed to consider. The months and days had to be just the right color, or it just wouldn’t feel right.
Some days feel better than others
For example, I love Wednesdays and Saturdays. Those days have the best colors of the week.
Wednesday is sunny yellow, brighter and lighter than all the other days. Saturday is a shade of green that fills me with energy and makes me want to be outdoors.
If all this sounds strange to you, that’s understandable. What I’m describing is a form of synesthesia, which is a cross-wiring of the senses that affects nearly 4% of all people, and causes some people to experience overlaps in vision, sound, feelings and tastes.
With this type of Synesthesia, perceptions of time are tinged with color. Some people associate days of the week, and months of the year, as specific colors. This is a form of time unit visualization, and according to Sean Day’s chart on the 73 kinds of Synesthesia, it affects about 22% of synesthetes.
Here’s how the days of the week look to me:
Looking at months, my March has always been bright green, and my September has always felt dark blue. When I think of a specific month, it’s as if there’s a colored cloud hovering over it, defining that time frame as pink, or orange, or blue.
