Rattling Handles

Yesterday I was reminded of an event I’d rather forget.

I had just sat down to use the restroom when I heard the telltale sound of the door handle jiggling aggressively, followed by persistent knocking.

My first response was to stand abruptly, covering my body.

….

And then I remembered.

That time when I was rushing to change to make it to the gym. I had a 20-minute window to change, leave work, and arrive by the start of class. It was always a rush to make it on time. Zooming from one area to another as quickly as possible.

On this day, I peeled off my jumpsuit, then my bra, and prepared to don my workout attire….

Just as my co-worker opened the door I’d neglected to lock in all my zooming.

Our eyes met, his in shock and disbelief, mine in embarrassment and mortification.

It’s ten years later, and I still cannot look him in the eyes.

This isn’t a memory I’ve thought of often. If anything, it is one I stuff to the back of my mind.

But it was brought hurtling forward due to the aggressive door jiggler.

And this made me think of how interesting our memories are. How many lie in the back recesses of our minds, cataloged and organized neatly away until a smell, a question, or an action brings them to the forefront.

It is wild to think about how the brain catalogs these moments.

We like to think of our minds as clean, digital archives where we can hit “delete” on the files we hate, but biology has a different plan.

When I was standing there in shock ten years ago, my amygdala, the part of the brain involved in processing emotion and signaling significance, was basically screaming.

Something important is happening.

Pay attention.

Remember this.

The embarrassment, the vulnerability, the sudden spike in my heart rate, the look on my co-worker’s face, and apparently, the sound of a rattling door handle all became part of the memory.

A giant, neon “HIGH PRIORITY” sticker slapped across the whole thing.

And then my brain filed it away.

Not gone.

Just waiting like a landmine.

Waiting, apparently, for someone to aggressively jiggle a bathroom door handle ten years later and detonate it.

And detonate it did.

I have all kinds of memories like this that lie forgotten until detonated. Not all of them are as embarrassing as this one.

And there are so many more I’d gladly pull to the forefront more regularly if I could.

But, unfortunately, memory doesn’t work that way.

It clings to these big moments.

The unusual ones. The emotional ones. The ones that made us pay attention.

Meanwhile, the gentler, sweeter archives of my life feel hazy, like trying to look through a fogged-up window.

I know I’ve laughed so hard I’ve cried. I remember the warm, fuzzy nostalgia of childhood summers full of camping trips and bicycle rides, but the specific details are blurred at the edges.

I’ve had the same best friend since the 9th grade, a constant anchor in my life, but I can’t tell you the exact moment I claimed her as mine.

And maybe that’s because there wasn’t one.

Maybe there wasn’t a single moment important enough for my brain to slap a neon sticker on it and say, “Remember this.”

Maybe a lifelong friendship isn’t built like that.

There wasn’t an alarm.

There wasn’t some giant moment when the universe announced: This girl. Pay attention. She’s going to matter.

There were just thousands of ordinary moments.

Conversations. Sleepovers. Inside jokes. Phone calls. Showing up. Growing up.

Choosing each other again and again until, somewhere along the way, a girl I met in the 9th grade became one of the foundational people of my life.

And I can’t remember when it happened.

That’s the strange thing about memory.

Emotional intensity can make some experiences easier to remember. Novelty matters. Attention matters. Repetition matters. How often we return to a memory matters.

But the things that matter most aren’t necessarily the things our brains preserve in perfect detail.

Sometimes the moments that build a life don’t feel like moments at all while we’re living them.

They’re just Tuesdays.

A camping trip.

A bicycle ride.

Sitting beside someone you’ve sat beside a hundred times before.

A conversation you don’t realize you’ll someday wish you could remember word for word.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the back of my brain is a crystal-clear file containing the afternoon a co-worker accidentally saw me topless.

Excellent work, brain.

So here I am, ten years later, startled by a rattling handle and instantly transported back to an office changing room I’d rather forget.

My brain did its job, I suppose.

It dragged a ten-year-old warning file to the top of the deck.

And while I wish it were equally good at preserving the quiet moments I didn’t know I would someday miss, maybe there’s something beautiful about that, too.

A life isn’t only contained in the moments we can clearly remember, it’s also built from all those forgotten Tuesdays.

My brain might never let me forget that afternoon in the office changing room, but you can bet that from now on, I’m checking the lock twice.

Always,
Your Trusted Friend ❤︎