The Color Four - A Mini-Documentary

Last year, Meredith was the subject of a mini-documentary film challenge.  A group of three university students were looking for a topic and had recently read an article about how Meredith's school had created an innovative environment for students with learning disabilities.  They came to the school and asked to interview some students, thinking that their film was going to be about this unique school.

After they learned about Meredith's unique learning and thinking style during her interview, they changed the focus of their film a bit and focused more on Meredith.  In the beginning of the film, Meredith is drawing and describing her number 4's personality.  It's a bit hard to hear, but she talks about how her number four likes snails and in the drawing, you can faintly see the girl holding a snail with the number four on it.  This is an example of her ordinal-linguistic personification (OLP) and how she personifies numbers.

The Trees Have Outgrown Their Season

I recently joined a few Facebook groups where people discuss synesthesia. Shortly after Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, someone in one of these groups asked whether anyone else was feeling badly for the trees that had fallen down during the storm. Many people agreed that they did. (Sorry for posting the photo for any sympathetic synesthetes out there!) People who personify objects like this may have Object Personification, a subtype of synesthesia.

Seeing that post prompted me to ask Meredith whether she felt bad for trees when they were chopped down. She said definitely yes. Since the trees are now losing their leaves here in the South, it got me to thinking about how that made her feel. When I asked, she said that no, that doesn't make her feel bad. The trees have just "outgrown their season," she explained. How poetic. I love that!

Elaborating on what she meant, she explained that the trees were excited to be moving on to a new set of leaves. Those leaves were like, SO 2012, anyway! I finally understood that she saw leaves as the tree's clothing and really as a fashion statement. She explained that the trees with bright, bold leaves in the Fall were the true "fashionistas." Then there are the scraggly oak trees with a few leaves holding on. She explained that these were like old ladies trying desperately to hold to the last bit of their clothing, afraid of being naked. They are waving their dry and crooked branches around like canes yelling at people in old, crackling voices, "Don't you take away my leaves there, young man!"

As we approached our house in the car later that day, I asked her what she thought about our great big Ash tree in the front yard. At that time, it was at it's peak color--a very bright yellow. For some reason, there have been a whole bunch of butterflies fluttering around this tree lately. Because of the tree's bright leaves and all the butterflies, she said that she sees our tree as a gay man. We had a good laugh at that.

While finding photographs for this post, I ran across this photo and thought that Meredith and other synesthetes like her would probably get a big kick out of it. I wonder if these sweaters are also like, SO last year?

Synesthesia...the OTHER Big Discovery

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When I discovered Meredith's filing system of pictures, I went to Facebook to tap into my friends to see if anyone knew about this or had similar systems.  My friend Brad responded by saying that it sounds like Meredith might have some synesthesia.  Synesthesia?  

Like most people, I had no idea what synesthesia was.  Through Brad and Google, I learned that synesthesia is when a person has a sort of cross wiring of their senses so that when they experience one sense, another sense is triggered.  Examples include seeing colors when you hear music, seeing letters and numbers as colors, or getting a particular taste in your mouth when you hear a particular name.  The synesthestic experience is involuntary and automatic and doesn't seem to change over time.

There are two theories about how or why synesthesia occurs.  The first theory is that people who experience synesthesia (synesthetes) have more cross-wiring between sections in their brain.  The second theory is that everyone has the same wiring, but some people have overexcitability or less inhibition in these areas. 

The most common form is called grapheme-color synesthesia where people see written letters as colors.  For some reason, it is really common for people to have their color for letter a as red.  Therefore, whenever I suspect someone has synesthesia and they tell me that their letter a is red, I'm pretty sure they're a synesthete.  Of course, letter a doesn't have to be red.  In fact, synesthetes colors are very individualized and very specific.  People won't just say their letter b is blue; they will say it is a light blue with a little turquoise tint to it. 

 A quick test with Meredith and I find out that yes, indeed, she has different colors for her letters.  But something was strange.  I discovered that if I wrote a word in color and none of the letters were in the colors that she "sees" them as in her mind, she was unable to see them. I had discovered this when we were on a camping trip in our RV.  After digesting this for a day or two, I tried another experiment with her that I won't ever forget.  We were driving on the highway and I saw something written on my McDonald's soda cup: "Keep [Texas] Litter Free." (The word "Texas" was red and the other words were black in case you can't see the color on your screen.) I showed it to Meredith in the back seat and asked her to read it.  She said, "Keep Litter Free."  You don't see this word Texas?  She responded, "Well, I see a letter 'a' floating there, but that's it."  Wow.  She only saw the letter a because the letter a is red to her.  She explained that she has always seen these extra letters floating around, but she never understood why.

The questions were running through my mind. What about school? Teachers use color all the time.  Dry erase markers on the board, vis-a-vis markers on the overhead, and textbooks are full of colored text as well.  I thought about the fact that in her class, they had a small dry erase board where the lunch choices were written every day...with a red dry erase marker.  Ha!  I thought I found a hole in her explanation because she went up and made her lunch choice just fine every day. But no, she explained that there was one boy who always talked out loud and when he would go up and read the lunch choices, she would go follow him so that she could hear what they were and make her choice. Holy cow.  She had found all sorts of ways to compensate.

Then Meredith tells me that if she happens to see a letter written on the board in the color that she sees it as in her mind, she also hears a sound.  Like a dog barking, an alarm, and a slide whistle.  That information almost put me over the edge.  I mean, that's a little crazy to imagine about your child.  

In researching synesthesia, I learned that one of the foremost experts on the subject is at Baylor in Houston--Dr. David Eagleman.  I contacted him and we had a conversation about these peculiar issues that Meredith was experiencing.  He said that he hadn't heard of the kind of word blindness that she was experiencing, nor had he heard of the letter-color-sound connection before.  Great...you never want to be the exception in science!

We made some immediate accomodations for her in her classroom.  We made sure the teachers only used black markers and she was given a black and white copy of any colored handouts.  Fortunately, after the issue came to light, Meredith was able to somehow figure things out on her own and now she doesn't experience the word blindness anymore.  As for the barking dogs and slide whistles?  I bet those are still there.

I saw a video with Dr. Eagleman today and he had a really good example of what it is like to experience synesthesia.  He showed a photo similar to the above picture.  He said that more than likely, you had an automatic thought in your mind, "Barack Obama."  That is how the synesthestic response works, except maybe you experience colors, tastes, feelings, or sounds instead of the word, "Barack Obama."

Do your letters have colors?  What about your days of the week?  If they do, chances are that someone else in your family has a red letter "a" as well!  For a family of synesthetes, it's fun to start arguments over what the correct color is for Monday or Tuesday.  Sometimes I have to pinch myself and realize that if anyone else would be listening in on our conversations, they would probably think that we had all lost it!