How far back in life can you recall? When do you think your earliest memory was?
I recall being very small and playing with my big brother and wearing shorts in a place with tall grasses, great big Orange trees, a white building with a screened in porch on the side and a huge rain barrel. I recall sleeping at night on the porch, with my brother and the door to the inside being open and things being not so dark at night.
I recall a smooth sand and gravel circular driveway, a huge round brick planter and a bright pink, huge neon sign glowing at night as cars occasionally traveled by on the highway right in front of the place. Adults were huge.
I place my age at two or three years old. We moved here when I was 1 and we owned a motel called Jewel Court on US1, way back in about 1954. It was a small wooden house with cabins on each side and a gravel and sand parking lot. With a big neon sign. A small citrus grove was behind the place. There were 8 of us, 6 adults and two kids and the house had only two bedrooms. My grandparents slept in one, my uncle and aunt in another, my Mom and Dad slept in the living room and on good days, us kids got to sleep on the porch.
I just recall being small and happy, the rain barrel, the tall, impossibly green grass, the trees and the neon sign. I was 2 or 3 at the time.
How far back can you remember?
The place is long gone now, but I recall standing there in the parking lot after dark with my folks and traffic was so light on US1 as to be nearly none. Now the road goes 24/7. I checked and the population of my city was around 4,500 at the time and is now 100,000 and rising.
I can remember a pal from our old apartment building at Talman and Lawrence in Chicago. A boy with bright blonde hair.
I can remember my babysitter at the time. An old woman named Lucy. She’s sitting in a chair and laughing at me.
I can remember looking out our front window and seeing our Nash Rambler (no foolin’) parked on the street. Made quite an impression, apparently.
My grandmother’s father took me fishing once at a river in Lexington, IL (or thereabouts). He was an old, fat, bald guy.
I can remember going to the hospital to see him on another occasion.
I can…get this…remember not being able to read. A pal of my mom was reading to me from, “Inside Outside Upside Down” and showing me the words. I can still recall how it made no sense at the time. That’s surreal.
I remember in Psychology class, the prof insisted that people do not remember anything before age 2.5-3 years old. He insisted that anyone remembering otherwise is mistaken and they were really older or a false memory. He had some cites at the time. Of course, he could have been full of it for all I know.
I remember back to about the age of 2. Since my mom didn’t marry her second husband until I was three, I was raised to call him “Dad”, and they thought it was a big honkin’ secret… she was somewhat startled when I pointed out the apartment building where we lived before she met Dad. She had no idea I knew that he wasn’t my biological father.
I was about 25 when I told her. I can keep a secret pretty well, myself.
See this thread that I started about this a few months ago.
An update: I saw a recent blurb at Science Daily Magazine (No link. Their search system doesn’t work right.) Researchers did find that children under 4 did remember earlier events, but only up to their language ability at the time of the event.
My take about why I might remember a lot prior to 4: I have a very visual memory. So language development was not so much an issue.
I remember being fed baby food out of one of those hollow baby food warmer dishes (the ones that you fill with hot water). The dish had a single partition–making two food reservoirs–and had a yellow bottom-half, a white top-half, a screw-top for filling with water and a couple of cutsey bears on the bottom of each food area.
I also remember being bit in the face by our Dachsund (in the back yard, under a mimosa tree). He tore open my cheek, and I had to have 22 stiches to get things closed up. I recall hearing the flight surgeon telling my mom that I was too young to feel the stiches he was putting in, and that I was only crying out of fear. If i close my eyes and think back on it, I can almost feel the needle going in each time, and the tugging when he knotted each stitch…the bastard.
Little turd that I was, I broke the food dish before I was 9 months old (my mom confirms this with absolute certainty), and it was never replaced. My younger brother and sister had to get their baby food straight from the jar, sitting in a bowl of warm water. I’m almost over the guilty feelings.
My being bitten by the dog–again, according to my mom–ruined my first birthday celebration. She says she’ll never forget when that happened and, presumably, neither will I.
I remember one time when my parents were still married (I had to have been aroune 4 or so) that I cut all the belt loops off of my jeans. I had no idea what they were for, I thought they were ugly, and therefore I thought they were expendable. My mom thought it was funny, but I think my dad was a bit ticked off.
Though, in general, I don’t have a great memory of events from my early childhood (4-7 years). A nasty divorce and custody battle could have something to do with that, though.
Most of my childhood blends together, but there are a few memories I can give a time frame for. I remember very little of the '80s (thank goodness!), with just two memories I can give a time frame for: I was three years old and I saw the big 3 on CBS (because CBS was channel 3), and I remember commenting that that was my age. That must have been in 1988 or 1989. I also vaguely remember watching the fall of the Berlin Wall on TV.
Hell, I can still draw a floor plan of the house we moved out of at the ripe old age of 5, musta been way back in 1967. I can also recall various events that happened while still living there. The back yard, the pine trees, the neighbors purple house, my younger brother jumping out the upstairs window . . . maybe that’s why he goes by the name kamikazee on these boards now. Interesting.
I can remember being bathed in the kitchen sink; it was a double sink - my sister was in the other one and we were pretending to be in a train. I don’t think I can have possibly been any older than 2 because my sister is 3 years older than me and would have been too big for the sink.
I can also recall trying to tell my parents that I didn’t like Marmite on my toast because ‘it makes my teeth itch’ - my milk teeth were growing in and my gums were sore. - probably age 18-22 months.
As my language developed, my parents used to think it was very funny to teach me long or complicated words:
‘Mesembryanthemum’ - they taught me to say the word and recognise the flower of this name when I was 2; I remember the astonished look on my grandmother’s face when I pointed the Mesembryanthemums out to her.
They also taught me to say ‘Akrotiri’ (the location of an air force base in Cyprus); we moved out there to live when I was 3 and I remember my dad making up a song ‘we’re going to Akrotiri’ long before we went, so I suppose I was about age 2 for that too.
I remember a lot of other dull and minor stuff from before age 3; it’s easy to know for sure that it was before 3 because it was before Cyprus and I was 7 when we came back.
I can also recall trying to tell my parents that I didn’t like Marmite on my toast because ‘it makes my teeth itch’ - my milk teeth were growing in and my gums were sore. - probably age 18-22 months.
As my language developed, my parents used to think it was very funny to teach me long or complicated words:
‘Mesembryanthemum’ - they taught me to say the word and recognise the flower of this name when I was 2; I remember the astonished look on my grandmother’s face when I pointed the Mesembryanthemums out to her.
They also taught me to say ‘Akrotiri’ (the location of an air force base in Cyprus); we moved out there to live when I was 3 and I remember my dad making up a song ‘we’re going to Akrotiri’ long before we went, so I suppose I was about age 2 for that too.
I remember a lot of other dull and minor stuff from before age 3; it’s easy to know for sure that it was before 3 because it was before Cyprus and I was 7 when we came back.
I have a very clear memory of what I recall to be a very large door sliding open, the side door of the family van. That van must have been at least five years old by the time I was born in '68 and was replaced with a station wagon a year or so later. We were headed for the Indiana Dunes and had stopped to pick up picnic supplies. I also remember being with Dad in the station wagon when he was on his way to the local Ford dealer to either order or pick up one of the few brand-new vehicles he ever owned: a 1971 Pinto. Given this time frame, the beach trip I remember must have been within three months of either my first or second birthday.
I vaguely remember opening this thread, before that, all’s a blur.
My first memory is of my first day at Kindergarten. Must have been a significant emotional event.
When I was about eight years old, my parents showed me some pictures of me as a toddler. It was a weird feeling to look at a picture, know that it was me, but not remember anything about that time or even have any idea of the house I lived in for the first four years of my life. We visited that house a year later. It was completely unfamiliar to me.
In general I have a terrible memory, especially of my childhood.
I had my tonsils and adenoids out when I was two. I remember the ruse the sneaky sleep doc used to get me to inhale the sleepy stuff (1951, so it was probably ether.) He showed me how to blow up a rubber bag and inhale the air in it. He pulled some kind of switcheroo, and I inhaled something nasty. I fell asleep and he didn’t. Later, I woke up in a crib, and I had a sore throat. When I got home, I was grumpy about being confined to bed while everyone else was having supper.
I remember the day my sister Tamia Llyn came home from the hospital. I would’ve been just under one year and ten months old. The little bitch got MY crib. I remember wanting to stuff her teeny sugar water bottle down her throat.
Funny coincidence, I was just talking to my wife about my earliest memory. I must have been around four, as this was when we were still living in California. It’s hazy, of course, but what I remember is that my parents were making a big deal out of buying a live lobster, and that if I remembered to come home by X-o’clock, they’d put it in a tub in the yard and I could watch it crawl around. I didn’t come home on schedule, (I was with a group of neighborhood friends, and it was my responsibility to tell one of the parents to have me home by such-and-such-a-time), and not only was I bitterly disappointed not to see the lobster (even though I probably didn’t know what one was), I got yelled at for being irresponsible. That’s about all I can recall.
Weird thing is, I remember kindergarten pretty clearly (my birthday is right around Labor Day, so that makes me five; I always turned the “right” age just in time for the school year to start, and then fell behind my classmates), and I remember everything after the age of ten or eleven very clearly. But in between five and ten? A hazy blank. The few memory spots are of my father beating and abusing me and/or my brother. Everything else? Nada. And the resumption of clear memory coincides with my mother leaving my father. Weird, huh?
One day my mother decided to use Mr. Bubbles for my bath. The result? An allergic reaction. I ended up with a rash and scratched and whined incessantly (poor mum). Mr. Bubbles was disposed of PDQ. I must have been about three years old then because my brother wasn’t around (never mind my sister!). Ack, I’m scratching as I type this!
So that’s my earliest memory. Wish it were something more exciting.
