Faulty Storage Systems

When memory holds some thoughts better than others.

The metaphor: 

This past week, I went to St. Louis for the first time. I spent most daylight hours in a conference hall full of great insights and resources, like one panelist’s line about local context: “If your feet haven’t touched the ground, your fingers shouldn’t touch the keyboard.” 

I thought about this as I jogged through the iconic Gateway Arch park on Friday morning and then again when I looked up the name of the river flowing by it. It’s the Mississippi River…and I should’ve known that. Ruefully, I thought of all the geographic information I’ve tried to store in the filing cabinet of my brain, which seems structurally unfit to retain it.  

The story:

When I started primary school, a group of kids on my bus studied the route as we drove it. They could predict each turn: they knew what house was next and who would get off there. I didn’t sit with those kids. 

I found the social anarchy of the bus overwhelming — not enough structure! — so I spent my rides looking out the window. I wasn’t building a mental map. I was listening to a group of girls sing the Aladdin soundtrack. I pretended to be disinterested, like I thought I should be, but internally, I followed every lyric. Shining, shimmering, splendid! Tell me, princess, now when did you last let your heart decide? What a satisfying internal rhyme.

As I grew up, my sense of direction stayed basic. I’m so lucky to have lived in walkable places until 2013, just in time to buy a smartphone with a navigation app. You know how some car doors have storage pockets where you can put stuff, like your phone or keys? Have you ever put your phone into what you thought was a storage pocket, but turned out to be just a hole, with no bottom? That’s what trying to store navigation details in my memory was like. They fell straight through. 

I stayed good at memorizing. Spelling, movie quotes, and lines for school plays joined the lyrics to Aladdin in the forever-folds of my brain. There were exceptions, though. I’ve always been terrible at trivia. I often draw a blank or, worse, free associate, like the time I said the deepest place on earth was not the Mariana Trench (the correct answer, and a real place) but Helm’s Deep (a Lord of the Rings location). Vocabulary words sometimes refuse to report for duty even when my sentences depend on them, like the time I forgot the word “socks” and called them “foot holders.” I have to carry on without them, stretching the arrangement of the words in my mind like magnetic poetry on a fridge. 

I chalk this up to my brain’s storage system. It seems that the filing cabinets of my memory are organized relationally, by what thoughts are like, rather than literally, by what they are. I open a drawer in my brain to find a description of how something feels and find the words aren’t there. Instead, there’s a list of different words or situations that my brain thinks are similar. It’s like getting to the bank to find they’ve closed for lunch but posted a list of establishments that sort of feel like a bank. Not helpful, brain!

Having an associative memory also makes it hard to get names right. At my last job, I was constantly mixing up the names Kenny and Larry: not rhyming or similar sounding, but parallel in their make-up of vowels and consonants. “I’m Clay,” a guy recently told me, and I handed that information to my brain to hold for a minute. When I went to recall it, my brain came back with “Cliff”: a different one-syllable noun with the same first two letters, followed by a vowel. This study in my brain’s associations is interesting for me, but I don’t think it felt great for Clay. 

This is why I use metaphors so often. It’s not a decision, a deliberate strategy to make a point more vivid. It’s a verbal detour, the next best way to express my point when direct language doesn’t come.

Maybe other relational thinkers switch between modes better than I can, or maybe they stop talking in moments when they can’t explain an experience directly. But being understood is one of my deepest drives. It feels important to explain how things feel, like I’m lost at sea and trying to get rescued. Then when only metaphors come, it’s like my radio is broken and I’m stuck using Morse Code. I have to hope whoever’s listening can decipher my coordinates to figure out where I am.  

Friday morning, as I ran past St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, I reached a point where the far pillar was directly behind the close one. From that perspective, the stainless steel rising white like marble out of green fields, it looked like the Washington Monument. Beyond the arch, the Eads Bridge stretched over to Illinois and I thought of Cincinnati, where I walked on a bridge above the Ohio River to Kentucky. Inside the arch, glass capsules flowed like blood cells in an artery, bringing people to the view at the top, there in the middle of the country. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was, but I knew I’d been somewhere like it before.

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