I have a clear memory of going to a store with my mother just before Christmas one year when I was young, and her buying that “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” 45 for people she was friendly with in her college classes. She explained the purpose of the fundraiser to me while we shopped, and it was probably the first time I understood what a famine was, though I’d no doubt heard the word before then given it was on the news a lot. I thought it was neat you could buy a real present for someone and help out people far away at the same time.
Mom has confirmed that she did indeed give the record out to a few of her classmates that year, so this really did happen.
But I just found out that the song wasn’t released until 1984, which is at odds with part of the memory: I distinctly remember being in the seat of her shopping cart while she went through the store. That’s extremely unlikely because A. I was seven, going on eight in 1984, and B. if anyone was going to be in that seat, it would have been my then one-year-old brother. Even if he stayed home with Dad, and even though I was small for my age, I really don’t think you’d put a kid the size of a typical five-year-old in that seat because it’s too small.
Trivial or important, do you have any “clear” memories that have proven to be a bit off too?
I have a small number of brief but very clear memories before age 4 or so. The context all fits, the brevity and the child’s eye view makes me think they are pretty accurate. I also have a number of other memories that I just don’t trust, maybe they’re based on something, but the details don’t check out or relate to confirmable events, so I never know what those are. Maybe the details get lost in fog, maybe reality has conflated with dreams or something on TV, beats me. Your case sounds like a merger of memories, maybe you went shopping with your mom at an early age and mixed the memory with later shopping for those records. Maybe the memory of the song playing ceaselessly some later Christmas season became a parasite on your earlier memory. Don’t worry too much about it, you’re not even 50 yet, you’re going to forget and confuse a lot more memories before you’re done.
I enjoy trying to find out more about my earliest memories.
One that I had thought was borderline “early” involved my mother and her friend making tarts and taking them up to the nursing home wing of the local hospital for the old folks. I remember waiting in the car to go and just lusting after the tarts on the seat.
One part of it that “dated” the memory was that the other woman happened to live in the rental house we used to live in. So the memory had to date to after we moved.
But I asked my mother about it a few years ago to see if she could remember how soon it happened after we moved. Turns out, we hadn’t. We were still living in that house and my memory of waiting in the car outside had nothing to do with the other woman living there.
So it was added to my list of well-under-3 memories.
When I was a senior in high school, my dad and I had a huge fight while he was driving me to school one day. When he picked me up, we didn’t say any more about it and went to the movie theater to see “Wayne’s World.” For once, I wasn’t embarrassed by his loud laughter because everyone else was laughing, too. This is a real thing that absolutely happened. Except that I graduated from high school in 1991 and “Wayne’s World” came out in 1992.
I remember being left at church during a family reunion and having to walk the 4 blocks home. Everyone was upset that they’d left me (I was 6 or 7). It was not traumatic for me, I walked by myself or with other children up to the church to play all the time (this was the fifties).
When I was maybe 6 or 7 my mother and older brother and sister we went to a state park in New York and found a footbridge that crossed high above a stream, and that was supposed to be closed for repairs. There was a break in the fence and we climbed through. My mother wouldn’t let me cross the bridge but she did let my siblings cross. I guess they were expendable and I wasn’t. After quite a long time my sibs came back and reported that they didn’t see much on the other side except a cemetery. A couple years later I asked to go back, and none of them knew what I was talking about. They tried to convince me it was all a dream, but I knew it wasn’t.
A little over a year ago, I made a side trip to visit the same bridge again. My memory wasn’t perfect. For years, I thought it was at Letchworth State Park, but later library searches convinced me it was really Watkins Glen State Park. I thought it was a stone or concrete bridge, but it was really wooden. The cemetery is still there though, which is what convinced me that I was in the right place. Years after the first visit, my mother was able to confirm that we had indeed visited Watkins Glen State Park when I was about that age, but she had no memory of that bridge. My siblings still have no memory at all of that trip.
Are you my mom? She thought she had gone to Letchworth as well. I don’t remember which one she did go to. I want to say Indian Ladder but that’s just too different.
Two of my earliest memories are getting out of Dad’s Ford van and helping select picnic supplies at a convenience store somewhere in Indiana on our way to the Dunes. These may or may not have been from the same day.
I know Dad owned a green Ford van when I was born and sold it when I was a toddler. I’ve seen pictures of me playing in the driveway with the van in the garage and the garage door open. I also know the family made trips up to the Dunes at least once a year for Dad’s birthday or a couple weeks later for Labor Day.
I distinctly remember sitting in the van and watching the side door open. I’m certain it slid open but sliding doors weren’t available until the vans were redesigned in '68 and those vans did not look like his. So the door must have swung upen in halves.
In my mind the first fish I caught when fishing with my father was a monster pulled from a raging river and I was struggling to not get pulled down the steep embankment. Years later upon my return to the spot I discovered a very slight incline leading down to a creek I could leap across with ease and was later shown a picture of a trash fish about six inches long. I wish I had never learned the truth and still try to hold on to the memory of the 4 year old from that summer day in 1959.
In general, I can tell my pre-school memories from a few things:
There’s no conception of being in a grade level, which was pretty much the way I internally marked time up through about middle school. While it was 1982 on the calendar, if you were to have asked me whenit was that UofH made it to the Final Four, I’d have said 4th grade.
Certain time “landmarks”- the color of the carpet in some memories, or what room certain furniture was in, or the car my family was driving.
In general, my memory is scary accurate; I often feign forgetfulness rather than bring out stupid detail.
I clearly remember this death-defying sledding hill which we were FORBIDDEN to slide on with a saucer or a toboggan, or anything except a steerable sled. We flew down this hill.
Recently I saw it. It was about 15° off horizontal.
I have memories of houses and/or places that I visited as a young child that I have since returned to years later, and nothing is ever as large as I expect it to be. I assume this is because I have grown…quite a bit.
I once lost a bet to my sister about the identity of my third-grade teacher. I clearly remembered that it was Miss W., but once my sister challenged me, I realized that she was right, and it was actually Mrs. H.
I remember two oddities from my Elementary School - one was a misplaced mosaic floor tile (it was white with a black border - one of the spots in the black line was occupied by a white tile), the other was a large room with a humped floor - the story the kids had was that there was originally a swimming pool there, but they wanted the floor space more than a pool, so it was filled.
I could have stopped by in my cross-country jaunt in 1991, but didn’t - and the school has since been demolished.
Will never know…
I really wish I had checked out those details - I even remember exactly where the misplaced tile was.
Well, this is getting weirder… I told my mom about the thread and she said, “No, you were that little! And it had to be 1981 because that’s when I was going to UMass Lowell.” So… anyone know of a record being sold as a fundraiser three years before BandAid?
I have a confirmed memory from when I was two, of wandering around crowded park with bright flowerbeds and a half timbered building. This was the finishing line of a marathon that my dad completed in 1989. When I went there again a few years ago I was surprised to find that the building was a creamy tan, almost pale orange colour. It’s a historic building, so I don’t think it has been repainted in the meantime. I think my memory must have changed it to white because all the other buildings I’ve seen since in that style have been white, including one just down the road from where I lived.
