Color Recognition

I love listening to people talk.  

I've come to find that not everyone thinks the same way.  When I was seven, I explained that I loved my Uncle Justin's voice; it was a smoky blue.  

My mother peered at me with a confused expression and asked in her orange, roughed-up tone, "What on earth does that mean?"  

I didn't know what she didn't understand, so I just blinked back with my own puzzled expression.  I had tried very hard to find the right word to describe the kind of blue.  I had even gone to a big book for it.  It had sounded right.

I'm older now and realise that not everyone can get a sense of colors from hearing people talk.  I don't mention it to people because it'll generally just confuse them, the way it did my poor mother.  Granted, my high school English teachers thought I was extremely clever with poetry.  

This was a stroke of luck because I needed a good grade to escape that prison of an institution.  

I can suppress it to some extent when I have to.  The city can be a riot of tones, colors, shapes.  It's brilliant for inspirational purposes but unfortunately I've never been able to use the knack to actually make music.  I'm not bitter about it; just a bit put out.  Musicians who make it big get fame and fortune.  And probably all of the really good food.

Where was I?  Oh yes.  Listening to people talk and colors.

There's one minor advantage that I have, sensing colors where sound is involved.  The same sounds tend to evoke the same array of colors and . . . well, they aren't images.  I can't call them images.  Dashes, bursts, jagged and gyrating lines. . ?  It all depends on the situation for me.  Find someone else who has the same 'condition' (like what we have is an illness; it's not), you'll be told different colors.  At least, this is from what I've read.  I've never met another person like me, though we're something like four to ten percent of the population, depending on what you read and who you ask.  Somehow, you're far more likely to come across a left-handed person.

Or maybe, like me, people just don't think saying, "That woman's tone is super pink and fritzy" is a very good conversation starter.  I certainly never told the medical officer about it at any point; we get enough pych screening as is, thank you.

But it's those very same qualities - the colors, the movement - that allows me to identify people's voices more accurately.  I don't have to see your mouth moving to know it's you.  I hear you and, after a fashion, I'll still see you.  Just not a you that you know about.

Keep that in mind, kids.  It might be important, later on in my story.