Your Earliest Memory?

[AHoosierMama]

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 ".

[Caricci]

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.

[BMalion]

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.

[Santo Rugger]

I spilled some coffee on myself, and said "hot". Must have been around 2.

[Mindfield]

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.

[Surly Chick]

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.

[Dishfunctional]

Originally Posted by Mindfield

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.

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!”

[Carl Corey]

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.

[Anaamika]

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.

[Lissa]

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.)




* Aunt was building a house, so this memory is pretty easily dated.

[lieu]

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.

[Winston Smith]

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.

[Jodi]

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.

[Hal Briston]

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.

[Mangetout]

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)

[Man With a Cat]

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?

[Antinor01]

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.

[AHoosierMama]

Originally Posted by Jodi

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.

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.

[velvetjones]

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.

[Kal]

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.

[John DiFool]

We were going on a trip (1963) to Canada. This being the days before child seats my parents
thought nothing of putting down a mattress in the back seat for me to crawl around on. The
memory is still very clear to me: I looked up towards the setting sun and saw what looked to
me like a big orange tiger in the clouds. I recall being fascinated for a number of seconds by
the sight. Talking to my mom years later she confirmed that it happened when I was 10
months old, and yes they read to me a lot so I knew what a "tiger" was. It was almost
like my consciousness clicked on at that moment but that's probably the wrong way to put it.

[Dishfunctional]

Originally Posted by Mr Bus Guy

The weekend JFK died...

Hmmm… this might be slightly off-topic, but I would hope the OP might have anticipated that the earliest memories of one Doper might spark more recent recollections in others. So many of my youthful memories seem to revolve around my dad. He had taken us to France with him in 1960. For three years, we lived in a small community of mostly American military and diplomat families just outside Paris where he worked. I guess because of the time difference it was late in the evening that we learned that President Kennedy had been shot. I remember that my brother and I were already in bed when loud knocking on our front door woke us up. I heard voices coming from the living room, some sounded distressed. Moments later, my mom came into our room to check on us and to tell us that everything was alright and to go back to sleep, some friends had just come over to visit. I was 14 years old and my brother was 12, so there was no “going back to sleep”. We were Air Force kids, having lived on or around military bases our entire lives, and we knew how families reacted to sudden, important events like general alerts and, when in foreign countries, other more urgent things. We knew that something was wrong.

Our house had polished concrete floors - as a matter of fact, the entire home was built of concrete, as were many things in that country, things which we were accustomed to seeing fashioned of wood, even the telephone poles – and I remember feeling the cold up through my feet as I walked down the hall from our bedroom. I recognized one of our neighbors in the living room, the wife of one of the servicemen my dad worked with, standing next to my mom, her hands clenched beneath her chin and looking worried. As I came fully into the room I saw her husband, looking a bit out of place dressed in civilian clothes. He, too, was standing and looking intently at my dad who had his back turned to us as he spoke to someone on the phone. Then my dad hung up. He turned and said something to everyone in the room, but I do not remember the words that he spoke… just their impact. Everyone in the room sat at once, as if on cue, like puppets with their strings cut… except my dad and me. I just stood there feeling the cold of the concrete floor. It was the first time I ever saw my dad cry.

Although there were daily television broadcasts from atop the Eiffel Tower just a few miles away, they were limited to just certain hours during the day and, of course, they were in French, so for three years we hadn’t had a TV set at home. The English-language radio was almost as bad – a very limited broadcast schedule, hardly any of what we today have come to recognize as “news” - mostly big band and bee-bop music and re-plays of dramatizations from Radio City Music Hall and Rockefeller Center back in the States. So it was that I first learned that Dad could cry and presidents could die… against the background of popping static and a distant but familiar voice speaking assuredly of “a fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Hi Ho Silver’…”

[Ice Wolf]

Earliest memory (I think): lying in a cot or on a bed, big bright TV screen above me, night-time, and I wiped Vick Vaporub from my chest (must have had a cold or something) into my eyes.

Not a good scene ...

[Stan Shmenge]

I remember being in the womb and the pain of my circumcision.

[AHoosierMama]

Originally Posted by Dishfunctional

Hmmm… this might be slightly off-topic, but I would hope the OP might have anticipated that the earliest memories of one Doper might spark more recent recollections in others. So many of my youthful memories seem to revolve around my dad. He had taken us to France with him in 1960. For three years, we lived in a small community of mostly American military and diplomat families just outside Paris where he worked. I guess because of the time difference it was late in the evening that we learned that President Kennedy had been shot. I remember that my brother and I were already in bed when loud knocking on our front door woke us up. I heard voices coming from the living room, some sounded distressed. Moments later, my mom came into our room to check on us and to tell us that everything was alright and to go back to sleep, some friends had just come over to visit. I was 14 years old and my brother was 12, so there was no “going back to sleep”. We were Air Force kids, having lived on or around military bases our entire lives, and we knew how families reacted to sudden, important events like general alerts and, when in foreign countries, other more urgent things. We knew that something was wrong.

Our house had polished concrete floors - as a matter of fact, the entire home was built of concrete, as were many things in that country, things which we were accustomed to seeing fashioned of wood, even the telephone poles – and I remember feeling the cold up through my feet as I walked down the hall from our bedroom. I recognized one of our neighbors in the living room, the wife of one of the servicemen my dad worked with, standing next to my mom, her hands clenched beneath her chin and looking worried. As I came fully into the room I saw her husband, looking a bit out of place dressed in civilian clothes. He, too, was standing and looking intently at my dad who had his back turned to us as he spoke to someone on the phone. Then my dad hung up. He turned and said something to everyone in the room, but I do not remember the words that he spoke… just their impact. Everyone in the room sat at once, as if on cue, like puppets with their strings cut… except my dad and me. I just stood there feeling the cold of the concrete floor. It was the first time I ever saw my dad cry.

Although there were daily television broadcasts from atop the Eiffel Tower just a few miles away, they were limited to just certain hours during the day and, of course, they were in French, so for three years we hadn’t had a TV set at home. The English-language radio was almost as bad – a very limited broadcast schedule, hardly any of what we today have come to recognize as “news” - mostly big band and bee-bop music and re-plays of dramatizations from Radio City Music Hall and Rockefeller Center back in the States. So it was that I first learned that Dad could cry and presidents could die… against the background of popping static and a distant but familiar voice speaking assuredly of “a fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Hi Ho Silver’…”

No worries about being off-topic. I've been considering the idea of starting a thread in the Pit about the militant SWAT dopers that so indignantly police thread "hijackings". To me, conversations meander naturally and I'm always interested to see where they go.

[Jodi]

Originally Posted by Dishfunctional

Hmmm… this might be slightly off-topic, but I would hope the OP might have anticipated that the earliest memories of one Doper might spark more recent recollections in others. So many of my youthful memories seem to revolve around my dad. He had taken us to France with him in 1960. For three years, we lived in a small community of mostly American military and diplomat families just outside Paris where he worked. I guess because of the time difference it was late in the evening that we learned that President Kennedy had been shot. I remember that my brother and I were already in bed when loud knocking on our front door woke us up. I heard voices coming from the living room, some sounded distressed.

My father says his earliest memory is playing under the table in the front room that had the radio on it. He can remember looking out from under the table at a roomful of tense adults all sitting or standing very still, listening to the stern staticky voice of the announcer tell them about a bombing in Pearl Harbor. He was two years old.

[the chicken of exeter]

My first memory is of really bright sunshine, and my mum teaching me to read for the first time. My mum told me later that she started teaching me to read on a plane to Florida, but that was when I was only one and a half, so I might have made up that memory.

[sugar and spice]

Originally Posted by Mindfield

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.

This happened to me as well, one of my 2 earliest memories (I don't know which is earlier) is me sitting on my mothers lap, and a women dressed all in white was pointing a stick at me, telling me it wouldn't hurt. The stick was attached to a wire that lead to a blue box. When I was 15 I busted up my elbow and went to the ER, the stick turned out to be a thermometer, and I finally knew that I hadn't invented the whole thing. My mother says my only ER visits were at 9 months and 2 years, so it must have happened when I was 2.

[Dorjän]

My earliest memory is playing with a bright green ball in the hallway outside of our apartment. I was 2 years old at the time.


I have a LOT of memories from age 3-4. This was during the time we lived in Isfahan, Iran so I'm not surprised that I've retained so much of that unique experience. My favourite of those memories was during one of the many plane trips it took to get there. The flight attendant took me up to the flight deck, I stayed in there for most of the next 2 hours, completely captivated by the view and all of the oh so cool lights, switches and buttons!

[CaerieD]

I have the worst "earliest memory" in the world. Luckily, this isn't a topic that comes up often, but whenever it does, I always feel incredibly silly answering. It's sort of funny in an odd way, though, so here it goes.

What I believe to be my earliest memory is of laying on a blanket on the floor in my parents' apartment, having my diaper changed by my mother while my older sister talks to me. As I was potty trained by eighteen months and we moved into that apartment when I was six months old, there's a window of about a year that this could have taken place during. A potentially earlier memory is of me toddling out of my bedroom in that same apartment and walking in on my parents discussing whether or not it was appropriate to allow children to use the word "butt."

Oddly, I seem to have become a farly well-adjusted member of society, in spite of these earliest memories.

[dwc1970]

I must have not have even been two years old when, one night I was crying in my crib. My mother went in to pick me up and carry me out to the living room where she sat down with me in the easy chair to comfort me. While I was on her shoulder I remember seeing the glow of a street light just outside of the large picture window in the front room, shining through the closed drapes.

[RealityChuck]

Getting a new car -- a blue Plymouth. We drove up in our green Plymouth and drove away in the blue. I was 4 or 5.

[5 time champ]

Originally Posted by Happy Wanderer

I remember being in the womb and the pain of my circumcision.

Ha-- I remember my conception. It was my Dad's birthday, and my mother wanted to give him something extra special that night.

[MrFloppy]

I remember being pushed in the pram (a lot) by Mum. We had just got a cat and it was in a large shopping bag on my knee.

I was three.

[Baldwin]

From when I was three; standing next to a back-yard merry-go-round. (Don't know if they still make that kind: a cruciform device with four seats; you push and pull with your hands and feet on a big lever and it goes 'round and 'round.) A kid's Oxford shoe hit me in the forehead, leading to one of many ER trips for stitches. Still got the scar.

[gigi]

Originally Posted by Jodi

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.

I think I remember the earliest thing as being in the ocean in Florida and feeling like I was going to drown. I remember I was wearing a mustard-colored shirt over my suit, which makes sense because it would have been the early 70s. I remember boats in the distance.

The story that's told is I looked like I was in trouble but Mom didn't want to get wet so she sent someone else to retrieve me.

[Mindfield]

Originally Posted by Baldwin

From when I was three; standing next to a back-yard merry-go-round. (Don't know if they still make that kind: a cruciform device with four seats; you push and pull with your hands and feet on a big lever and it goes 'round and 'round.) A kid's Oxford shoe hit me in the forehead, leading to one of many ER trips for stitches. Still got the scar.

Ooh, sounds rather like one of my young memories. I was about four, as it was shortly after my mother split from my dad. I was visiting her wherever it was she lived; she had shacked up with some guy in a townhouse. She (or he, I don't recall) had bought me a toy U-Haul truck to play with. It was rather large, as toys go; I was able to push it around on the ground by bending over and leaning on it with my hands. It was also made of metal, not chintzy plastic, so it was good and sturdy enough to stand up to a kid's punishment. So there I was pushing it at great speed down the sidewalk. My head was was down and in such a position that I was able to see the truck and two or three feet of sidewalk in front of me. Sadly, this was my undoing as before I knew it some kid's tricycle pedal smacked me right above my left eye. These were the days in the mid-70s when some pedals were plain serrated metal affairs for grip instead of covered with rubber, so me, running at speed directly into a serrated metal pedal coming at me from the opposite direction, also at speed -- well, the outcome was not good. I felt the impact, stood up and swiveled around. Blood streamed down over my eye, partially obscuring my vision as I let out a wail and started to run back to my mother's front door. In mid-wail, however, I noticed something astonishing: It didn't actually hurt! The wail was more a pre-emptive strike against the pain I thought was to come, and when it curiously did not, the wail sort of trailed off as I arrived at the front door, where I looked up at those who were gathered there watching me. I even knew I must have had a puzzled expression on my face, which must have looked quite at odds with the blood streaming down my face.

My aunt, who was there too, explained that I was in shock, but kept telling me how brave I was being. I wasn't going to contradict her, I just kept thinking "But it doesn't hurt, how is that brave?"

It did start hurting eventually -- especially when the doc stuck that damned needle right in it to administer a local anesthetic. After that I felt nothing again, just these squicky-feeling tugs against my skin as he threaded the stitches. I still remember that feeling -- and it still skeeves me out.

I still have that scar, too, though it's faint. It's mostly noticeable because it bisects my left eyebrow faintly, and no hair grows on that thin line.

[Miss Purl McKnittington]

I think it's going to the hospital to visit my mother after my youngest brother was born. (I know it was the youngest one because I was walking pretty steadily on my own, and I'm only 21 months older than my younger brother. My hair was also in pigtails, and I didn't have enough hair to do that until I was older.) I got a blue bubblegum cigar. I actually don't have any memories of seeing my baby brother -- I was more into the gum cigar and seeing my mom. I would have been three and a half.

After that, the memories come fast and thick, because I was diagnosed as a diabetic when I was four going on five, and I have a ton of fairly traumatic and stressful memories of that time.

[Oslo Ostragoth]

Originally Posted by Kal

The second is of being bathed in the kitchen sink.

Ditto.

[Duke of Rat]

I can remember being in my crib, taking the red music box out of the back of a white bear. And I remember my mom putting a chair in the doorway of her closet. I asked her about that years later and she said that's where she nursed us kids, she'd open the closet door since that blocked the entry into the bedroom, the bedroom didn't have a door of it's own and she could get some privacy this way. I was the youngest, so she wasn't nursing my sister.

[Miss Mapp]

I remember sitting and playing on a green carpet with a big, ugly flower pattern. Mom says that was the carpet in the apartment we rented in Cleveland before we bought the house I grew up in; we moved to the house just before I turned 2, so if that is the apartment carpet, then I was a little less than two.

I remember my grandparents visiting us at the house just before my little sister was born. This would have been right around my second birthday, since her birthday is 3 weeks after mine.

I also some early memories that are harder to pin down to an exact time--I might have been 2 or 3 or 4. For example, I remember a large, square hole cut in the kitchen floor of my grandparents' house, and us little kids gathered around, looking down into it. There was rushing water beneath, I think from a hose or a burst pipe. A man in a white t-shirt came in the front door, and my older brother ran up to him. I have an idea that this man was my grandfather, but if it was, I must have been less than 2, since he died that summer; my second birthday, above, was the last time we saw him. If the man in the white t-shirt was my father or one of my uncles, it must be some time later.

[AHunter3]

I have some which might be < 2 years old but they aren't specific enough to know for sure.

Earliest one I've got nailed (and know for sure that I remember rather than remembering being told about over the following years):

I was a few months past by 2nd birthday and

{I didn't know this background until decades later:} the graduate student housing my folks had just moved into had a water heater that leaked for awhile until my Dad got someone to come in and get it fixed... the water heater was right there in the kitchen so "leaking" meant "onto the linoleum floor".

/backdrop

So my Dad is describing it and I only tune in to the conversation when it sounds interesting to my 2-year-old ears, which is when my Dad says "............ drip, drip, drip....." and then probably goes on to say things I could not follow.

I wait for a chance to butt into the conversation and then say/ask "Daddy you went drip drip drip!"

He says: "I did?" Paused a beat and then goes back to his conversation, without explaining to me why he had said "drip, drip, drip" which as any fool could plainly see was what I wanted him to do when I said to him "Daddy you went drip drip drip".

Annoying and frustrating and therefore stuck in my head to be remembered forever.

[Mangetout]

Originally Posted by MrFloppy

I remember being pushed in the pram (a lot) by Mum.

Oh wow - reading this just brought back one for me - I remember a navy blue pushchair (would be called a stroller nowadays) - it has a footrest that could be locked in a horizontal position, or dropped down like a step. I remember my mum pushing me past a pub called The Tabby Cat - again, this would have been before the age of 3.

[Darryl Lict]

This is fairly topical, and with the miracle of the internet, I can confirm that I was 3 or 4. Why is this? It snowed in Los Angeles in 1962. For those of you from out of town, this does not happen all that often. Yeah, it snowed in the San Fernando Valley in 1962 and I could probably find out the exact date with a little more research. This I remember.

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

Lying in my crib on my back, crying in order to make my mother's face appear above me. And getting upset when my father's face appeared instead.

[Argent Towers]

My parents took me to a marine museum in coastal Maine. I walk down a dark hallway and at the end of it is a stuffed pufferfish. I flee in fear.

[Stranger On A Train]

Originally Posted by Happy Wanderer

I remember being in the womb and the pain of my circumcision.

I find this highly unlikely. The brain will, of course, form memories from birth (or properly, even before, once there are enough neural connections to form impressions); however, in order to render those memories you have to have context. How the heck would you know what circumcision was when you can't even raise your head to see what's being done to you? How would you remember "being in the womb" when you can't see or differentiate anything? Memory is prone to suggestion, and I suggest that you've formed these memories post hoc. I'm inclined to give a little more credence to impressions of being in the womb, especially when sparked by similar environmental cues, but I doubt that these could be categorized as distinct memories of a particular event.

My earliest distinct memory, like Qadgop the Mercotan's, is being in a crib. I was looking up at a Winnie-The-Pooh mobile that I found in storage years later. I figure on being somewhere between four months and a year. I recall intermittent memories when I was clearly younger than two, including being fed baby food (red stuff good, yellow-green stuff bad), fishing with a bamboo pole on the edge of the dock (I kept dipping the tip in the water), swim class at the YWCA, and being in a walker stuck on the front lawn. More or less continuous, coherent memory trails start at about the age of three. I find it curious when people say they can't remember anything before five or six years of age.

Stranger

[installLSC]

Mine, unfortunately, is nearly suffocating to death as a young child. My mother used to be a farmworker back in our small eastern Washington town. She didn't have enough money to pay for childcare, so she would leave me and my sister in the car while she worked. One hot summer day (90+) I saw my sister run toward me screaming because she was being chased by a cropduster spraying the fields. We rolled the windows all the way up and must have been there two hours before our mom was able to get back to us. I talked to her last week and she said it probably happened when I was two. The oldest event I can specifically date is the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980. I remember being wrapped in coats and scarves just like it was a heavy snowfall, but what fell from the sky was gray instead of white.

[Liberal]

Sitting in a grocery cart, reaching out, and yelling, "Tang! Tang!"

[Dishfunctional]

Originally Posted by AHoosierMama

"...So it was that I first learned that Dad could cry and presidents could die… against the background of popping static and a distant but familiar voice speaking assuredly of “a fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Hi Ho Silver’…””


No worries about being off-topic. I've been considering the idea of starting a thread in the Pit about the militant SWAT dopers that so indignantly police thread "hijackings". To me, conversations meander naturally and I'm always interested to see where they go.

Thanks, Mama... until someone starts recounting the ealiest recollections of their horse!