Think back as far as your brain will go in this lifetime and what do you get?
Mine: I’m short enough to stand under the kitchen table, reaching up to pet our dog, Chips.
My Dad’s answer (he was born in 1929) was "Churning butter at school. The churn was passed from student to student; each kid took a turn until the cream became butter and then we had it on our bread ".
Hearing “Downtown” by Petula Clark on the radio in my parents’ car. It was before my brother was born, I’m pretty sure, so I was no older than three. Wait, I think I remember my third birthday party.
I have a very distinct memory of standing on top of my stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh (with a removeable red t-shirt!) in my crib, holding onto the railing watching my mom.
I spilled some coffee on myself, and said “hot”. Must have been around 2.
I don’t remember what age I was – probably 2 or 3, I think. My mother and father (who were still together at the time, so it must have been '73 or '74) were at some kind of motel, dragging me along. I remembering fascinated by the twirling neon flower-like arrangement of the sign in front. It had a (small) burlesque theater stage where bands would also sometimes play. My father, being a jazz trumpet musician, had a gig to play there with the band he was in. I remember being backstage with my father and the rest of the band, wandering about. I wondered what was on the other side of the curtain we were all behind, so I peeked my head out – and saw an audience. “Sing!” they cried when they say my little face. “Sing!” Suddenly embarrassed I quickly ducked backstage again.
I never knew where this was until about four years ago, when I took a job as a PC technician at a hole-in-the-wall used goods/refurb merchant. As it happened, the building next door to us was a motel with a strip club in it. Its sign was a mesmerizing, twirling neon flower-type arrangement: The Sword & Shield in Brampton, ON. The sign hadn’t changed, except some auxiliary signage had been erected denoting strip club performances.
Riding around the neighbors’ basement on my tricycle with a laundry basket over me. Which was placed on me by my brother and the neighbor boys. We were playing a “game” called Mystic Birdcage which involved me trying to run them over with my tricycle while encumbered with a laundry basket. No wonder I’m so emotionally scarred.
I don’t think this counts as a memory but when I was 18 months old, I was rushed to the hospital with pneumonia and a fever of 107 degrees. I was kept there for quite a while. My parents were talking about it this past Christmas and about how scared I was of the animal curtains in the room. Unaccountably, I burst into tears (feeling like a total idiot) so I must have some unconcious memory of that time.
Wow… how interesting! My earliest memory also involves an audience, but they were yelling “Dance!”
I was standing atop a large, round, wooden table beneath what seemed like a huge grape arbor in my Italian grandfather’s back yard, surrounded by relatives all clapping to some Old Country accordion music and encouraging me to “Dance!”
The Watergate hearings.
My mom was watching them on TV. I was too young to understand what was going on, but I still remember images of people testifying. And that Nixon was a bad, bad, man.
I don’t remember anything from my first five years, which were spent in India. I think this is a real pity. I must have blotted it out when my parents brought me here.
My first memory is of kindergarten, and my teacher, Mrs. Cook, attempting to make sense of my very-fast-talk-like-this-all-the-time-Hindi and trying to teach me English.
I have two memories from when I was about two years old. (That’s what my family says from my descriptions.)
One is that I’m sitting on a giant pile of dirt*. I reach down and take a handful of it and pop it into my mouth to find out what it tastes like.
The second is of a dream I had. I can see myself falling from the sky to land in my crib where I wake. Even today, I can see the room as if I’m standing in it: window on the left wall, my crib against the right. My crib is made of light-colored wood with a white plastic strip across the top rail. There are blue figures of some kind on my sheets. (Mom says they were probably Smurfs since I dearly loved watching the antics of those little blue people.) The walls are painted yellow and I have a red mobile-or-something dangling above my crib. (My mom doesn’t remember what that item was but confirms that something hung there.)
Kindergarten. Someone had pulled the mitten attached by string yarn through the back of a coat to another mitten out of the coat altogether. I was wrongly blamed and made to go stand in a corner. Heh, how traumatic to first learn that injustice exists.
My first memory is described perfectly in the opening lyrics of one of my favorite Paul Simon songs (Late In the Evening).
*
The first thing I remember, I was lying in my bed
I couldn’t’ve been no more than one or two
And I remember there’s a radio, coming from the room next door
My mother laughed the way some ladies’ do
*
I suspect the song was Witchy Woman by the Eagles, which was released in May of 1972, which would make me 2 yrs and 4 months old.
This is really wierd, but the honest truth.
When my family went to California when I was seven, we went to the ocean. I was out frolicking in the waves with my brother and sister when I was knocked over by a wave. It knocked me into the fetal position and tumbled me over and for a half-second I was suspended in the warm quiet water, and I had a completely primal sensory memory of being in my mother’s womb. And I knew that was what it was – “This is what it was like in Mom’s tummy.” It was such an amazing thing to me to remember, even at the age of seven, that I remember that event at the beach very, very clearly, even though many other details of the trip have faded. It wasn’t like at the age of seven I was giving the subject any thought, especially while excitedly swimming at the beach, so I know that it was an authentic experience. So I remember remembering before my birth, if that makes any sense.
Other than that, I remember being carried down the hall by my mother, who is whispering excitedly to me. I remember I was wearing an orange dress. Pictures indicate that was my second birthday.
When my daughter was coming down with a bad cough, I was talking about it with my mother:
Her: Oh, I hope it doesn’t turn into the croup. I remember when you had that as a baby, it was terrible.
Me: Was that when you made a tent out of plastic over my crib to keep moisture from the humidifier in?
Her: Ummm, yes…how did you know about that? I never mentioned doing that.
Me: I remember it…I can vividly recall staring up at the plastic and being intrigued at the way the drops of condensation were forming on it. And that my throat hurt like hell.
Her: That’s impossible…you were only six months old.
Me: Impossible or not, I can remember it like it was yesterday.
After that, I got nothing until kindergarten.
And of course now I have a hard time remembering yesterday.
I remember eating toast and Marmite, complaining that it was making my ‘teeth itch’ - my back milk teeth were growing in at that time. I remember taking a bath in one side of a double kitchen sink, with my sister in the other side - she’s three* years older than me and we moved abroad for a few years when I was three years old; both of these memories are before that time.
*(so it can’t possibly have been when we returned back to the UK, as she would have been too big to fit in the sink)
The weekend JFK died. I would have been almost 4, and my dad was driving me to a birthday party I was supposed to go to, but he kept pulling over to listen to the radio.
Also, like Hal, I can’t recall what I had for lunch yesterday. Yesterday was Thursday, right? 
My earliest clear memory is of my moms wedding when I was 3. My mom had just had her gall bladder out and spent most of the wedding and reception on the couch.
Anyway, the thing that I strongly remember was being upset that I didn’t have a present for her like everyone else had brought. I stuck my hand in the pocket of the (very adorable) suit I had on and there was a ticket in it. I don’t recall what sort, perhaps from the cleaners. So I climbed up on the couch and presented my mom with the ticket I had. I remember being so happy because I was able to give her something too.
My earliest undetailed memory is from when I was around 2 when it was just mom and me. Everyone now and then we’d hop in the old suburban and drive down to tennessee or florida. (lived in ohio then). I remember being in the back of the suburban playing and napping on the drive.
FASCINATING! My brother claims to remember being born. His was a difficult birth, with forceps. He describes the memory as tremendous pressure on his head.
I remember watching news of the assassination of JFK on TV just five days after my 3rd birthday.
The most vivid early memory I have involves a bit of a story and happened the summer of 1964 about 5 months before my 4th birthday. My brother (15 months older than I) and I and a neighborhood friend were playing around a home that was being built across the street. I’m fairly certain we’d been told not to play there but there we were anyway.
The basement had been poured and there was a floor but no walls or roof had gone up. Brother was jumping over the various holes in the floor that would later house plumbing, electrical connections etc. friend and getting bolder and bolder and taking on the larger and larger of the openings he stops at the biggest opening…the opening that would eventually be the stair case down to the basement. The stairs haven’t been build yet. A makeshift staircase has been erected with wooden pallets so you can climb up and down. I don’t know how big the opening was but anyone who’s had a basement with a stair case leadiing down to it can probably figure it out. It looked huge to me. Way too big for our little jumping game (it was a kind of follow the leader with my friend and I following him and jumping each hole that he jumped).
He decided that he could make it if he had a running start. We advised him that he was crazy and he shouldn’t try. Of course this just made him want to all the more. He backed way up…he ran…he fell…right to the bottom. Now my friend and I are standing over the opening of the basement yelling at him. “Get up!” “You big faker!” “Stop it, we know you’re just faking”…until we realize that he’s not faking and he’s not moving or getting up.
We take off across the street and back to my house. For whatever reason, I don’t walk into my house. Instead I ring the doorbell, over and over and over and over. Finally my mom comes to the door and she’s none too happy with the doorbell ringing. I think my little brother may have been napping. When she finally arrives my friend has to tell her what happened because I can’t seem to get the words out.
I have no memory of what happened the rest of that day but I remember clearly going to the hospital to see my brother, except that I’m too young to actually visit him. All they’ll let me do is stand outside on the lawn outside with my older sister and wave to him. He comes to the window with his head completely swathed in bandages and waves with that same shit eating grin on his face.
My brother, ever the daredevil, had many more brushes with fate including being bitten by a rattle snake and almost severing his finger with a power saw.
The happy ending is that my brother is alive and well with no residual effects of the cracked skull he got from the fall. He’s married has four kids and holds a masters degree in computer science.
Got two and not sure which would be the oldest one.
The first is of sitting on the floor playing with some red scales from a Post Office playset and seeing my dad go out the front door. That can be dated to before I was two.
The second is of being bathed in the kitchen sink.