The Girl Who Smelled Pink - Issue 26: Color
▻http://nautil.us/issue/26/color/the-girl-who-smelled-pink
My tongue is orange!” my 2-year-old daughter shrieked after licking a dollop of clear hand sanitizer. More orange experiences followed. “Mommy, my ear feels orange,” she moaned when an earache struck. “Mitten off! It’s orange,” she whined from inside her snowsuit when a scratchy tag in her new white glove rubbed uncomfortably against her wrist. As her vocabulary blossomed, she started to associate colors with scents. “What’s that brown smell?” (A local coffee roaster.) “What smells pink?” (Dryer exhaust puffing out of a neighbor’s basement vent.)
Anyone who has spent time around toddlers knows they say some strange things. But my daughter’s curious way of talking about colors was so emphatic, and so consistent, that I began to wonder if she might be experiencing synesthesia—a kind of cross-wiring (...)