My earliest memory…
I opened some thread by ftg on MPSIMS…
OK, so it’s not that bad. Still, the spouse makes fun of how poor my memory of my youth is.
All of these are verified …
13 months … getting diapers changed and wandering off into the woods with my dad chasing me
16 months … riding the neighbors newfoundland like a horse. It was a big, black, shaggy newfoundland.
20 months … watching ‘speed racer’ at a neighbors house.
22 months … picking strawberry’s with my mom, eating more than I picked, and then vomiting them all of the back seat of the station wagon on the way home.
Those are the ones I could just remember off of the top of my head. I have plenty more if I sit down and really press my memories. The funny thing is, I can remember nothing about pre-school despite having gone there from about ages three to five.
Darkrabbit
I remember being in my stroller and seeing a huge piece of something (think it was rolled up carpet) slide out the back of a moving van and fall to the street, causing the cars behind to swerve around or screech to a halt. I must have been under 2 at the time.
The thing is, I also remember talking to my Mom about this incident when we were doing a unit on memory in school (this was in the 2nd or 3rd grade, as I recall, so I would be 8? 9?). Now, I know I remembered the event then, but that doesn’t seem that weird, because it was only 6 or 7 years before. I almost feel like I remember it now, but I think what I actually remember is talking about it with my Mom, when I was older.
I have always wondered if this really “counts” as a memory. What it really is is a memory of a conversation at age 8 or 9 combined with a relatively recent (at the time) memory, neither of which is that impressive.
So I guess my question is, what do they qualify as a memory? If its something you thought of time and time again, then it doesn’t seem that odd that it would stick. This seems to me to be distinct from a clear memory, like if someone asked me what my Mom gave me for dinner the night that happened, I would have no idea, because I never thought of it again.
Boy, that turned into a long ramble, I hope someone can pull some meaning out of that.
I also discovered electricity at an early age. In my case it was with the help of a bottle opener and a determination to see what was inside an outlet. I’ll admit I don’t remember my exact age but I do remember it was Thanksgiving and my mother and my aunts were cooking in the kitchen when I conducted my experiment.
I have various other memories of events that occurred in the house we lived in from when I was two to when I was five. But the only one I can put a specific time to now was my recollection of my first day in school which would have been when I was four.
Two weeks after I turned three. It was my brother’s birthday. He sat me up on a dresser and I fell off, slamming into his mini-shooting gallery game. I busted my lip and had to go to the hospital for stitches in my lip. I don’t remember the fall, but I can clearly see the hospital trip. I remember the doctor blew up a glove and drew a face on it, and my brother gave me a ride in a wheelchair.
I can’t remember anything else until kindergarten. Windy day, dress blew up over my face, utter embarassment!
My 12 year old daughter still retains many memories from before the age of four.
She still recalls riding in a jeep with my friend that died before she was three years old. She has many memories of my mother, who died before she was four…and insisted that her memaw came to see her the night after she died (but that’s a whole other story!)
I wonder how long she’ll hold on to those memories…
Just recently, I began writing down my earliest memories through childhood, so I do know with some fair certainty what the earliest memories I have are. I hate to admit it, but most of what might be “memories” before 3 or so are probably actually remembering what I’ve been told about, like the Easter when I was about 2 1/2 and had taken off my “good” Mary Jane shoes somewhere in my grandparent’s house. The shoes couldn’t be found before church and I had to go to church wearing my old, scuffed-up hightop shoes (which I called “bulltat” shoes, because I had a storybook with a picture of a cat wearing shoes like them). There’s even a picture of me complete in easter finery save for the shoes, which were later found on a shelf beneath my grandmother’s kitchen table. I don’t actually remember this myself, though! LOL
When I was nearly three, though, we moved, and my mother and I flew (first time on a plane for me, but I don’t remember! :() while my dad drove with our stuff (My Mom was like 7 months pregnant). I do have specific memories where we lived then, from the time I was 3 until nearly 5–most of them are of the two playgrounds I would frequent. I can fairly clearly remember the neighborhood, because I would ride my tricycle around the block. Of our house, I only clearly remember the music room, where the piano and record player were. My parents did not listen to popular music very often, but they did have a couple of albums that had Perry Como songs (“Round and Round”) and a song called “Young Love” - both of which came out when I was around 3-4 years. I also remember that I would go with my father to the bank, cleaners, etc., because back then they used to give children lollypops. 
If I haven’t dated myself already, I also had a Davy Crockett doll that I got when I was about 3, and I remember that.
Thanks for giving me the chance to think of these memories again, and I’d also like to suggest to other to write them down, keep some sort of journal of them–it’s wonderful to go back and re-read them from time to time. LOL It also might jog loose some other memories!
tarragon
I remember so much stuff from an early age… but then, my mother has a wonderful habit of telling family stories clearly, so I’m not really sure which are memories from that age, and which are memories from a few years older, of Mom telling a story about me at that age. Also, the home movies I’ve watched all my life have reinforced memories that might not have been there otherwise.
I do remember nightmares from a very young age…
The first memories I’m absolutely sure of are from about 4 or 5. Our dog had gotten hit by a car, and when Dad told her that at the front door, Mom cried. I hadn’t known moms cried, so that made a strong impression. In fact, it makes me cry now (43 years later).
I had a tonsillectomy at five, and I recall my escaping from the “crib” they stored me in (back then, parents could only visit, and I was scared to death) – but I think that might be from Mom talking about “Susie running down the hall with nurses chasing her”. That is, a memory that probably would have been forgotten, had I not heard Mom talk about it later.
But one I know is a true memory came from that operation. I recall people holding my arms and legs down while they put a tube down my nose AND IT CAME OUT MY MOUTH. (It was after the surgery, and I wouldn’t stop bleeding…)
I didn’t know those two places were connected. And I can picture each person holding me down. I know that’s a real memory.
My earliest memory is of being very, very young, since I was small enough to lie across my mother’s lap and not fall off. We were in the house on Pizarro Road in Jacksonville, and I was lying across her lap (with my head to her left side), and the room was pretty dark as if the curtains were drawn, and the TV show “The New Zoo Revue” was on. People in animal costumes were dancing around and singing. I can still sing the song, and picture the dance moves they were doing.
Also I remember when my parents had a party one time–this may have been before that, but I don’t think so. All their friends came over, and everyone went into the kitchen, and they left me in the living room playing with my toys or something. Well, I decided I’d go see what was so much fun in the kitchen where everyone else was laughing (now, I realize they were smoking dope). I crawled over, and there was a single stair to climb up to get into the kitchen, so I crawled up it. Apparently I had never crawled up a stair before, because everyone made a HUGE deal out of me having crawled up the stair. I recall being passed around from person to person, everyone sticking their face in mine and saying what a smart baby I was.
I also recall thinking how tedious all this was, incidentally; I knew on some level that they were praising me for something that they could all do without noticing it, and I hated the sense of being patronized. But I loved the attention; go figure.
That’s my earliest memory. At age 30, though, it’s probably a memory of a memory.
I have some early memories from the time my dad and mom divorced and mom took me and my sister home from New Mexico to Oklahoma…one particular memory of that time is when we were checking into a hotel and i remember having to hold my head way back to be able to see the “dipping bird” on the counter. I was mesmerized. It was a red crane or something and its entire function was to dip its beak into a glass…(a perpetual motion kinda gizmo??)
I also used to be sure I could breathe underwater and fly…those “dreams” seemed so real!! To this day I can still remember that entire phase vividly…I was 2-3 at that time.
There are several other instances that my mom has verified, but swears there is no way I could possibly remember from that age. She has always considered me to be a bit off anyway…that just proved her point even further…
My earliest memory that can be dated was from age four. But I have this fuzzy memory, note sure if it was constructed, of being put to bed at a time when I couldn’t have been three. When I was born one of my feet was twisted around and I wore a special shoe and a strap around my leg to gradually straighten it up. This was gone before I was three, and as the memory was of having the strap taken off for the night, I would have had to have been quite small.
I very clearly remember going to the hospital in Syracus, NY to see my younger brother a few days after his birth… for some reason they wouldn’t let me and my sisters come into the hospital room, so we all stood outside with my father while my mother held the baby up in the window so we could see. This was about 2 months before my fourth birthday…
About a year earlier, our family lived in a house in Syracus (we moved before my bro’s birth), and I have a few clear memories of that time. I must have been between 2 and 3. One clear memory is of standing at the outside door to the basement of the house next to ours. My friend Jerry lived there, and his older brother had a toy called a Monster-maker (or something like that)… you melted wax or rubber into a mold to make monsters. The coolest thing EVER, I thought at the time (I had yet to discover the true beauty of boobies, you see). Jerry and his brother were in the basement playing with the Monster-maker, and I wanted to play, too! But that door, and the stairway going down scared the snot out of me! Oddly enough, I don’t remember if I went down or not… I think I did…
I have a few memories from when I was young. My “long term” memory is better than my “short term”.
I remember when I was between 2 1/2 and 3, my grandparents moved into a new house. My grandfather took my sister and I over there to see the house I guess. He was holding me in the crook of his left arm and my sister was standing beside him, and he couldn’t seem to get the door open. He was grumbling over and over about “the stupid door”.
As an aside, several years ago I was talking to a friend in college about how I regretted that I wasn’t able to stay home with my daughter, who was about 18 months at the time, but that I knew that she probably wouldn’t remember much from that time. My friend said that around age 4 or 5 most people go though some kind of “hormone wash” that clears most of their memories from before that time. Guess that would explain the article.
Melissa
-Mtgman’s wife 
The first thing I remember is standing with my parents and looking at the Christmas tree when I was 19 months old (I know this because it was the only year we had a full-sized Christmas tree in that house). I don’t have too many solid, connected memories from before I was three, though, just odd moments. After three it’s all quite detailed, particularly verbal memories; I have the knack of being able to recall scraps of conversation about completely mundane things from fifteen or twenty years ago. (Actually, I wish I couldn’t do this, because it means I have to remember all the dumb, embarrassing things I’ve ever said in my life, long after everyone else has forgotten them.)
Like ftg, I initially took it for granted that my students would retain everything they heard; I had to learn the hard way that they usually don’t.
Wow, great posts everybody.
I want to stress that this “no true memories before age 4” theory is accepted as fact by the mainstream psychological community. And I do believe it is true for the vast majority of people. Their argument against us remembering such early things are the usual: were told about it later, saw pictures, just dreamed it up, etc.
In my case, and it appears in the case of several posters, I don’t buy it. Because of the “special situation” of my family before age 3, no one talked about earlier events. It was very taboo. The few pictures of that era were kept hidden away for a long time. Since I didn’t realize such memories were notable, I didn’t start asking about them until well into my adult years. I actually think my earliest datable memory could be of an Easter Egg hunt at my grandmother’s house. Since I haven’t located a relative yet that remembers it, I consider it “interesting but unproven.” So I do apply skepticism to my own memories.
I too, have memories prior to age 4 (a lot of them are pretty fragmented though, and very fuzzy) which include getting sick on one of my mom’s friends shoulders (which apparantly happened more than once) and my uncle sleeping in a room with me, he was in a bed by the window I was (I think) in a crib, at least that’s what it seemed like to me at the time (it could have been a playpen) as well as when my great-aunt broke this really cool mug that was supposed to be mine. In all of the above cases I was either really happy or really mad.
There are a lot of fuzzy memories about my childhood insomnia (I would wake up at 11 or so, Dad often got home from work late, I’d go downstairs and watch tv with him - make that lay on daddy nd act all sleepy - and he’d carry me up and put me in bed ) I know this was prior to the age of 4.
Those of you who have clear memory from that time are lucky. I used to be able to remember a lot more of my early years but my memory is developing ‘holes’ at the age of 21. :eek:
Guess I’m the oddball. My earliest memory is of riding my red-and-blue-with-stars tricycle and of almost going down a hill with it out of control, but then my grandfather runs up and stops me, because I’m too scared to think of what to do. My guess is that I would have been about 5 or 6 then. I also have some memories from preschool, but I think only from the last year or so, so I think my cutoff for memory is five years old.
My clearest is from age 2. I remember waking up from having surgery on an umbilical hernia, terrified because I didn’t know where I was (or more importantly, where my parents were). I looked around for a minute, realized I was in a bed where the only other person in the room was a nurse (she was blonde), waited a minute to see if my parents would show up, then realized my tummy hurt, and I started screaming. The nurse tried to calm me down, couldn’t, then left to find my parents. I remember them coming in and calming me down while trying to explain why my tummy hurt and I couldn’t touch it. Only other thing I remember from that is my brother being mad because I got ice cream and he didn’t (he was either 5 or 6 then).
I remember when I was 2, being left in the grocery cart and seeing my dad walk out of the store with the groceries. 
I remember getting a boat for my second birthday. The only reason I remember it is because I remember my mom getting mad when I threw a tantrum for a boat at the toystore.
I also remember sitting in the den of our house when Elvis died, which would have been when I was 3. My sister was a month old, and we saw stuff about the funeral on the news, and I remember my mom being sad.
I remember going to Disneyland when I was three, and going through the “It’s A Small World” ride.