Finally, the chance I had been waiting for for years. How many times have you spoken a play on words with someone’s name? e.g. Someone saying to me, “Are you handy?” nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. I do this all the time to other people.
I walked into a paint store the other day. I asked,
“How’s your day going? Colorful.”
He looked at me. I looked and him. I then asked him if he gets this all the time. Unbelievably, he said, “no.” I then asked him if he uses this response to that question. He said, “no.”
You have got to be kidding me! Paint store. Colorful. I don’t know if it was that he didn’t know he could use colors to describe his day, or he didn’t know he could have fun with his work environment, or what.
For me, it’s kind of like synesthesia in one form or another. That’s where a thought in one representational system (the five senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, gustatory, and who knows, maybe even the sixth!) is directly linked up in the brain to something in another representational system.
With me and with this situation of paint store and emotional description. Feel – paint store – color – colorful. I guess you have to be open to and/or constantly searching for crossover, similarity, metaphor, etc.
All I know is, all my attempts through all of these years of trying to catch someone off guard with a play on words has paid off. Maybe he is afraid to label himself or has chromophobia, the extreme fear of colors…
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The successful use of metaphor is a matter of perceiving similarities. -Aristotle, Poetics (4th Century B.C.)
Photo Credit: abbyladybug on Flickr
