Ups and downs of muscle memory
Muscle memory is a powerful thing. Tricky, too.
Each time I leave home, I back out of the garage onto the driveway. The routine is woven into my muscles: look into the screen to make sure the way behind me is clear, then turn on Satellite radio (to the bluegrass channel), attach seat belt, then reach down to the left of the steering wheel to push the button to deactivate the thing that causes my car to turn itself off at red lights.
And somewhere in that sequence I reach up to the sun visor and hit the garage door button to close it. With those things done, I turn onto the street and head out. And three miles down the road, the question hits me: Did I close the garage door?
Geez, the fuel I’ve burned driving back to answer that question.
Before turning around, though, I first try to reassure myself that, yes, of course I closed the garage door. Don’t I always? And then I try to remember – as I pulled away did I look back and notice the door shut? That’s followed by the next round of worry, mostly about what’s inside the garage that could be taken. There’s the carpet shampooer, the queen mattress leaning against the wall (difficult to steal). There’s my little old man Smoothie, the sheltie dog, on the other side of the door leading into the kitchen. But he’s a good boy and doesn’t bark, so nobody would know he’s there.
I turn around and go back because of my bike – the steel-frame hybrid the company doesn’t make anymore – that’s parked in plain sight. My cycling friend and I each bought one of the bikes 15 years ago. Hers was stolen from her garage a while back, and I’m not sure she ever got over that.
Our brains, and our muscles, have a way of going to automatic pilot for the little things we do every day. It’s less about forgetting things than about not having to remember them. I replaced my coffee maker with a model with automatic shutoff because I was tired of walking out to the kitchen after a long day in my upstairs office to find the pot had been on all day and had cooked the coffee in the pot to syrup. Mindless habit is also what makes me check and touch each burner knob on the stove before leaving the house. And it’s why there’s a regrettable need for new cars to include technology that reminds drivers to check the back seat for their sleeping babies.
So much of our daily motions are reflexive; imagine if we had to deliberately think about hitting the brakes when we’re cut off on the highway. When I play piano, I don’t have to think about where my fingers go; my muscles remember as my brain conjures the melody. I mindlessly pet my pup while I’m reading in my chair.
The farthest I’ve ever had to retrace my travel to check on the garage door was about eight miles, but that required exiting the highway to go back in the other direction, and it made me late for a meeting. As I pulled up the street that day and my house came into view, I saw that the garage door was closed. Of course it was, because my muscles always know what to do. My brain just doesn’t trust them.