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“You walk quietly,” she says, not looking up from her phone.

“I had never noticed it before. It’s just habit I guess.” I shrug, not expecting her observation.

“It’s not a bad thing, I just noticed you don’t make a lot of noise when you walk. I didn’t hear you coming from the kitchen.” She takes a handful of pretzels from the bowl in my hands.

I knew I walked quietly, I just hadn’t ever noticed myself doing it without thinking before. I learned very quickly very young how to go unnoticed. Some of it was because I was up to general mischief as a little kid; some of it was because I remember how angry my parents would be if I got up in the middle of the night for a sip of water and I creaked the wrong floorboard. Now that I’m older and don’t really worry about either of those things. I don’t think about them often.

I learned which types of flooring made the loudest noises, where the creaks in the floorboards were, where the tiles echoed the loudest in the house. I learned to walk on my toes with my heels off the ground, like I was wearing invisible high-heels. I learned when exactly my dad stopped playing video games at night and when my mother would leave the living room for the night. I learned to be a silent walker not because I wanted to, but because I felt like my only option was to stay under my parent’s radar at all times.

I still was silently, without noticing it.