Curated 4/5/16 by @SquiggleStudios! It's about a girl who finds out she has synesthesia. Press space to go to the next page. * * * 804 words I am a synesthete, and I used my own colors for this! (although this is a fictional story) Synesthesia studio: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/907196/
Story:------------------------------------------------------------------------ “I did it! I just reached 400!” I shouted, running to greet my friend Bethany at her locker. “Pi digits?” asked Bethany. “Yes! I bet I can get to 500 by Pi Day!” I exclaimed. Bethany shook her head in wonderment. “You must be crazy,” she said. “Nobody can memorize that many digits. How do you do it?” “Oh, it’s easy, I replied. “You just have to remember the patternse of the colors.” “Colors? What colors?” Bethany asked, confused. “You know. The colors of the numbers. Like 2 is red, and 5 is blue, and 7 is yellow.” At Bethany’s confused look, I continued babbling. “And T is orange, and E is light blue, and your name-your name is purple!” “What are you talking about, Lindsay?” said Bethany. “I’m not crazy!” I insisted. “Don’t you see colors, too?” “Um, no,” she said, and took a step back as if I was contagious. I was confused. Was I the only one who saw those things? Was I actually going crazy and just didn’t know it?” “Lindsay, are you listening?” “Huh?” I hadn’t realized Bethany had spoken. “I said I was going to take the bus home today.” “Oh. Okay. That’s fine.” As I walked home alone, I began to question everything I believed. Was my name really yellow? Did numbers really have colors? Was the sky really blue? “Hello, Dad,” I called as I walked through the front door of my house. “Hi, Lindsay! How was your day?” “It was good. Um, by the way, does 3 have a color for you?” I asked. “Of course it does!” Dad replied. “Really?” I wasn’t crazy! “Yes, it’s black on white. A lot of people don’t call black a color, but I think it is.” “Oh.” So Dad didn’t see the colors, either. “I have to go do homework now, and I’ll need the computer.” “Sure, go ahead.” The minute I logged into the computer, I opened up a Google page and typed in: “Colored letters and numbers.” The page returned about a million hits of colored refrigerator magnets. I revised my search: “Seeing colored letters and numbers.” The first thing that came up was something about how eyes process different colors, but the second thing caught my eye. Synesthesia. I clicked the link, and it took me to a Wikipedia article about a mental condition where people’s senses get crossed, and they can hear colors, or smell words, or see colored letters and numbers. I almost leaped up from my chair. I wasn’t alone! I kept reading, and found out that only about one person in 2,000 had synesthesia. And the colors were different for everyone, so my purple 8 could be green for someone else. I wasn’t crazy. I was just different. “Syn-es-thesia?” “Are you making it up? I’ve never heard of that before.” “Are you going to die? Is it like terminal cancer?” “Is it contagious?” Bethany yelped, and backed away. “I can feel it! I think I caught synesthesia!” She ran away toward the nurse’s office. “Well, are you? Going to die, I mean,” Lucy asked worriedly. “No, it’s not contagious and I’m not going to die. It’s not a disease. It just means I see the world a different way. Like that sign over there.” I pointed to an EXIT sign. “For you, it’s just a word, but for me, the letters have colors.” They stared at me blankly. “Colored letters?” “Is it a hallucination?” I shook my head. “I know what it means,” said Ryan loudly. “It means you’re a FREAK.” “Lindsay is a FREAK!” another kid echoed, laughing. Before long, most of the kids were chanting it. “Freak. Freak. Freak.” My face was burning. I ran for the nearest bathroom and slammed the stall door. I pulled my feet up on the toilet so no one would see my feet under the door. A second later, the bathroom door opened. “Lindsay?” It was Lucy’s voice. “Lindsay, I know you’re in there.” I stayed silent. “Those kids don’t know what they’re talking about. I bet they’re jealous.” “I don’t know why I told them,” I said. “I should have known they’d make fun of me.” “I think it’s really cool,” Lucy replied. “Seeing colored letters? It sounds so fun! You’re unique, not a freak.” “You think so?” “Of course. Just ignore those kids. Their opinion doesn’t matter.” “Thanks,” I said. We walked out of the bathroom together, and this time my head was held high. So what if I was different from them? As I walked by the EXIT sign again, I grinned. No one else could see the blue E, or the gray X, or the yellow I, or the orange T. It kind of felt like my own magical powers. Seeing them just made my world a little brighter.
