"Do you have synesthesia?" This was a question my massage therapist asked me last week. I had no idea what that even meant, so I said, "Probably."
He laughed, then he explained that synesthesia is a condition where a person can experience two senses at the same time. He used an example of a person smelling a distinct smell when they see the color green. I've had similar experiences at Phish shows, but totally unrelated to synesthesia. I didn't bring that up.
Coincidentally, that same evening, Poseidon and I were having a beer with one of my coworkers and her husband, and we were noticing the details on some of the pint glasses, when she mentioned that her friend assigns gender to inanimate objects, including beer glasses. If a pint glass is "plain" it is male. If a glass has a stem, it is female (which seems a bit backward to me), if the color of the logo is yellow, it is female, etc.
I then blurted out, "Wow, I assign gender to numbers and letters, and months." I've imagined genders for letters, numbers, and months since childhood. Guess what? There is a name for this! Yup. It's called ordinal-linguistic personification, which is a form of synesthesia.
Here is what my brain thinks when it sees numbers, letters, and names of months:
NUMBERS
1 - male (a tomboy)
2 - female
3 - male (usually with a moustache)
4 - male (very aloof)
5 - female (an overweight female)
6 - female
7 - male
8 - female
9 - female (a tomboy and a bully)
10 - male
LETTERS
A - female
B - female
C - female
D - male
E - male (a bully)
F - male
G - male
H - male
I - male
J - male
K - female
L - male
M - male
N - male
O - female
P - female
Q - female
R - female (a loner, very independent)
S - female (dainty, prissy)
T - male
U - female
V - male (another loner)
W - male
X - female
Y - male (arrogant)
Z - female
MONTHS
January - female (tomboy)
February - female
March - male
April - female (usually sad)
May - female
June - female
July - male (when I was younger, July was female, but now it is male)
August - female (overweight female)
September - female (tomboy)
October - male
November - male (always brown)
December - male (he always wears a hat)
I'm glad I finally looked this up, if anything, just to give it a name. Seriously, I assumed everyone did this, especially as a child, but today when I did an impromptu survey during lunch, and out of the six of us at the table, only I thought the letter "A" should be wearing a dress. Any other ordinal-linguistic personification folks out there?
--Fortuitous Observer
