Lemondrop

Our president's first name is very colorful to me.

I mean that literally. When I picture "Barack" in my head, the "A"s look red, the "R" is green, the "C" is yellow and the "K" is blue. The "B" is less vivid, appearing as gray-black.

"Barack" has looked that way to me since I first saw the name. And it will always look that way to me, because each letter of the alphabet and each number from 0 to 9 has its own color for me.

That's because I have a neurological condition known as synesthesia. It means that the senses in my brain got cross-wired, and that I see letters and numbers as certain colors.

And things have been this way for as long as I can remember.

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That Apple Tastes Blue
Seeing letters and numbers is a common manifestation of synesthesia, which occurs more in women than men. But other people who experience the phenomenon see music as colors or taste food as colors. Just imagine being a kid and telling your mom, "This meatloaf tastes really blue today!"

For me, some letters and numbers are distinct colors -- three is green, "O" is white -- while others, like "E" and "J," are shades. And when I encounter words or names with many of the same letter, I come to associate them with that letter's color. For instance, the name Amanda is a "red" name to me because it has three "A"s and 44 is a blue number because fours are blue.

A Visible Difference
It wasn't until a few years ago that I realized not everyone sees colors when they read words and numbers. I was working with learning-disabled kids and had read a story about getting children to remember numbers as certain colors to help them with their math -- a suggestion to which I thought, But doesn't everyone see their numbers in colors as it is? Is 7 not green for everyone?

I decided to take a poll of my office and my students. The results -- only one child seemed to have synesthesia, giving credence to the claim that it affects about 1 percent of the population. And boy did I annoy the poor 7-year-old kid. I would ask him the color of his letters and numbers throughout the day, every day, to see if he was tricking me.

"What's your R look like today?"

He sighed. "It's still green."

"How about your A?"

"Blue."

"Amazing!"

He rolled his eyes.

It's in the Genes
I really went through the roof when I found out that synesthesia is most likely genetic. I called my mother to see if she had passed it down to me. She said no -- but my sister, who is also a writer, is a synesthete too. My dad is deceased, so we'll never know for sure if he was one. But I do know he was brilliant at math and had an obsession with recording baseball statistics on legal pads, so maybe he at least saw his numbers in color.

Because that's the other intriguing part of all this -- some researchers say that synesthesia is tied to creative, scientific or mathematical prowess, maybe because synesthetes are better able to remember or work with letters and numbers. Other noted synesthetes include Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote "Lolita," physicist Richard Feynman and composer Franz Liszt.

A Colorful Learning Curve
I've wondered, though, if synesthesia comes from nurture rather than nature. When learning the alphabet, the letters are usually tied to certain objects. My "A"s are red -- maybe my kindergarten teacher showed a picture of a red apple to get us to remember it. My blue "K"s could have come from an image of a blue kite, my green "L"s from a leaf, and so on.

Mysterious, I know. But why delve too deep? The fact remains that words and phone numbers have probably entertained me more than the average person. I hope for nothing more than my synesthesia to continue making my world a more a colorful place.

You can see if you have my particular type of synesthesia here. Click here to read about more mysterious illnesses.

Lauren Fritsky is a writer based in Philadelphia.