Synesthesia

From Wikipedia: Synesthesia (from the Ancient Greek syn, meaning "with," and aisthēsis, meaning "sensation") is a neurologically-based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme → color synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored, while in ordinal linguistic personification, numbers, days of the week and months of the year evoke personalities.

Although it lessens as I grow older, I have always retained characteristics of synesthesia. Letters and numbers have specific colors in my mind, and it can often be upsetting (well, annoying is perhaps a better word) if I see a word or number and it is the "wrong" color. Even worse, I hate it when things are organized by color and the color order makes no sense to my mind. Take these ordinary dividers for example. Whoever chose the color sequence for the colored tabs must have been completely crazy. How can one possibly be organized with a sequence of red, white, blue, orange, yellow, green, pink, and orange? It makes no sense at all. For one thing, two oranges?

To me, if something is organized by color, the order should make some sense. For example, gradually darkening shades of blue would be nice, or if different colors are desired, they should follow the spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Call me OCD, but I used to organize my markers and crayons using the spectrum as a guideline, and this came in handy when I worked at Sears and I had to organize the handbags based on color. My displays were always the best. Years later, when I would proclaim that "aesthetics were of the highest priority" my coworkers at the art gallery would tease me, but I didn't care because it was an art gallery after all, and where else should aesthetics reign if not at an art gallery?

So now I am here trying to organize a binder of information at work, but it hurts my eyes to look at the way these dividers are arranged, and I'm frustrated that I can't do anything about it, making it hard for me to get any work done. Next time I'm just going to order dividers with all clear tabs!