How far back do your memories go -- and how accurate do you think they are?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Continuing the discussion from 2026 Celebrity Death Pool:

The 17 responses mentioned went on a tangent about early school memories, where some people seem to believe they remember the names of all their teachers and several other people, complete with anecdotes and the homework they did, while other people (me, for instance) hardly remember anything (particularly: no names) before the age of 8.
As this is off-topic for the Celebrity Death Pool, here is a new thread to elaborate, if you wish.
There are also older threads on similar topics, if you prefere those:
June 2002: How Far Back Can You Remember?
May 2004: How far back can memory go?
December 2008: How far back can memory go?

2

I remember a handful of memories from age 4 fairly well but with some inability to reconstruct some things, such as the layout of the living room - I remember giving someone a hug in the living room but my mind distorts the living room each time. Memories from age 5-6 are quite sharper. Memories from age 7 are clear enough that I can clearly name the items of food that were eating - which vegetables were cooked by my mother for most dinners, etc.

3

I remember things from before 3. I remember speaking Slovak to my great-grandmother, and how much she complained about her feet, and the taste of zazvorniky she made for me.

I have a brief memory of my great-grandfather’s funeral.

I remember my mother sitting me down in front of the TV for “a new program for kids”-- Sesame Street. I never forgot the story of the human characters, Susan and Gordon on that episode.

My mother backed up my great-grandmother complaining about her feet; my grandmother made zazvorniky at my request when I was a teen, and they looked and tasted just as I had remembered; when my son was 3, I got him DVDs of the first season of Sesame Street, and, in fact, I remembered the story down to some specific details.

I remember making projects in preschool, and a few months ago, I found them in a trunk of my mother’s. I had no idea she’d saved them.

So my very early memories seem to be fairly accurate.

I would say the earliest ones go back to about 2years, 8months.

I was extremely verbal, and at that age, could carry on a conversation with an adult. I was putting 2 & 3 words together in novel utterances before I was a year. My slightly OCD, linguist mother recorded a lot of my early speech, so I know this-- I don’t have any memories from before a year.

I have a Deaf friend who was language-deprived as a child-- she was not allowed ASL until she was nine, and finally declared an “Oral failure.” She says that her memories are fuzzy and unsequenced before she had language.

So maybe language skills facilitate memory.

For the people in the extreme ends-- lots of specific early memories, or none until late elementary school: how verbal were you?

4

The earliest memory that I can pin an actual age/date to, relates to events just after I had turned two years old.

I have a few other scattered early year memories but most of them I don’t remember how old I was at the time. I do have a couple of pre-school related memories though.

ETA:

Not sure about my speaking skills but I was a very early reader, as I could read reasonably well at 3.

5

The earliest I can confirm is from pre-kindergarten, so 4 years old, perhaps 3. I can remember my mom taking me to Wissahickon to sign up for kindergarten, and I remember Mrs. Somerville, our teacher.

I can definitely remember a time before kindergarten, and a few scattered events stick out. I can remember my parents taking us somewhere to get a shot or a vaccine or something. I can remember a Lost in Space episode that scared me, but not sure if that was before or after kindergarten, I can remember getting buzz haircuts at Duke’s. I can remember a Wildwood vacation we were planning and I told my parents I couldn’t wait to make footprints in the sand.

I’d say 4 is about when memories started getting stored in longer term memory (though not everything).

6

For some weird reason I remember sitting up in bed, before I was 3 years old.

I distinctly remember my 3rd birthday. It was at a Bill Knapp’s restaurant. I remember the server bringing me a cupcake with a number “3” candle on it.

When I was growing up, my best friend was a girl who lived next door. She was the same age as me, and we played all the time. She and her family moved when I was six years old.

After all these years (I’m 58 now), I still remember the times we played together. A couple years ago I took some photos of the house she grew up in, and sent them to her via Facebook. She replied, “I have no memories of living there.” I found this just… odd. I have tons of memories from when I was 3, 4, 5… 6.

7

I remember my 2nd birthday. My parents took me to Toronto Island, and the airshow was on, and I remember jets screaming overhead while my Dad was trying to push me on the swings.

I don’t remember much else, until I got to age three, and we were living in Calgary, and I learned to skate on the rink out back of the house, and I learned to read. Then, all kinds of memories come flooding back. First flight, back to Toronto. Cross-country train trips when I was 5, and so on. First day of kindergarten in Toronto.

I could go on, but this thread is “How far back.” Well, “how far back” in my case is age 2.

8

They say I was very verbal, and loud. And in three languages. Still my memories are not there.
I “remember” the first steps I took aged 8 or 9 months, clinging to the parasol stuck in the sand on the beach. Well, I thought I remembered that, until I found the exact picture. I was remembering the memory the picture had triggered, probably many years after it was taken.
Trying to remember on purpose, making an effort using what I know must have happened, my brother is 4 1/2 years younger than me. I remember one picture of him, a tiny baby, and my mother holding him. Just an image, blurry. I don’t “see” him again until some years later.
And who knows? Maybe there is a picture of that event too. Would explain the blurriness and the overexposure.

I would not mind if you (or another poster) went on, I find this very interesting. I did not mean to be restrictive.

9

Whenever I try to describe anything in my early life, I have difficulty separating my true memories from what I have been told.

One of my earliest memories is getting vaccinated at around my fourth birthday. We were going to West Africa in the 1940s, and they gave me every vaccine available. Some of them hurt…

10

I have a couple of very early memories. One is being wakened up from a nap when I was about 3, and another is watching one of the carpenters hammering a nail as he worked on our house (we lived in the basement while the upstairs was being built), probably when I was 4.

Otherwise, my memories really begin at age 6. One (rather morbid) thing that really sticks in my memory bank is attending the funeral of my dad’s uncle. I can still remember the sight of him lying in the coffin as we walked into the church.

One advantage of attending a small country school is the fact that I can name all my classmates in my grade at school. All six of them!

11

I have distinct memories of a pre-K program that was a combined school & day care but seemed like more school. I can see adults & kids, the facility, and sorta recall some events there. I attended for 2 intervals. Were those years or semesters or 2-month stints? No idea. At the time I thought of them as years, but I bet they were something akin to semesters. I started kindergarten very close to my 5th birthday, so if those were years, I was doing pre-K from just barely age 3.

The earliest I can positively date was age 4yrs 9ms when my youngest brother was born.

Once I was in kindergarten there are lots of memories of the people, facility, etc. The dear now-departed Mrs. Allen got me off to a good start.

12

About 4 or 5. I know all my K-8 teachers. (Hell, my first grade teacher lives across the street.) We had a Kindergarten class photo come up in a Facebook group and I remembered all the names except for one or two I struggled with, but eventually remembered (as they were only there for kindergarten.)

Meanwhile, I can only name you maybe one college professor I’ve had. Even my favorite professor I can’t remember the name of — I’d have to go through my texts where I was trying to figure it out with a friend.

Memory is weird.

13

We moved just days before my 5th birthday, so there’s a clear division there, and I have a lot of memories of the old neighborhood. My oldest memory where I know for sure how old I was is when I was 3, since I have a clear memory of skipping down my driveway holding up 3 fingers while singing out “I’m 3, I’m 3”.

My oldest memory that I’m not sure I entirely trust is from an afternoon when I was doing something to annoy my mother. She put me in a playpen as sort of a time-out and laid down on the couch to take a nap. I remember sitting in the playpen hoping she’d be in a better mood after her nap. The reason I don’t entirely trust the memory is because I must have been very young to still have a playpen to be put into. But some others here say they have memories going back to 2 years old, so maybe it’s a real memory.

14

I thought I remembered my 4th birthday, but when I was going thru a photo album, I discovered it was, in fact, my 6th. I remember when my sister was hospitalized for meningitis some time before that, but I’m not sure how much before. And I remember when our paternal grandparents had to come stay with us due to our grandfather’s stroke, and all 3 of us kids were crammed into a tiny bedroom - my brother was still in the crib, so maybe I was 4 then?

15

I can recall a couple of “images” from kindergarten - like the circle on the floor that we sat on. But little more. I really have a lousy memory for my childhood, even into high school. I’m envious of people whose youth is more than pretty spotty/blurry.

I’m dubious about many claims for very early memories. I suspect a great many are recreations from photos, family stories, and the like. I suspect this is even greater for younger people, as the number of photos and video increased. And I think memories are very fallible, and subject to rewriting. I would imagine that if someone treasures a very early memory, that memoriy might get embellished/rewritten each time it is pulled out of storage.

16

Like many respondents to this thread, I have memories from around age 3-4. But I’m always skeptical of their accuracy because of all we know about human memory filling in the blanks over time. So I’m glad to have actual evidence of a few memories!

In early first grade I recall being very intense about the reading workbooks and wanting to get through the highest level editions. A few years ago I found a handwritten note from my teacher to my mother explaining why I had taken a workbook home over the weekend and that she was worried I was too focused on schoolwork and didn’t play singly or with the other children!

I also have some vivid memories of my earliest apartment. My parents took a lot of photos which I digitized a few years back. It was surprising and pleasing to see I remembered the layout and some details mostly correctly.

17

In 1977 we moved from Teaneck NJ to Washington Square Village, the massive NYU housing complex in Manhattan. It was a few weeks after my 3rd birthday. I remember being driven into the building and entering the elevator. My mom and dad asked me to press the number for the 9th floor, but I couldn’t reach the 9 and pressed the 6 instead, saying that 6 is like 9 only upside down. My parents accepted my logic with a smile. When we arrived at our new apartment, I was overjoyed to see the letter J on the door, because my name started with a J, too. I told them that and they agreed with me.

That was my earliest clear memory. I have flashes from before that, but nothing coherent.

18

I can remember a few things from before age 3 - I remember being bathed in the kitchen sink; I remember complaining that Marmite made my teeth itch (some of my molar teeth were still coming in); I can remember being able to walk all the way to the back of the cupboard under the stairs and I remember picking blackberries that grew over the fence at the top of the garden. All of these memories are from age 3 or before, because at that age, we moved from England to Cyprus for 4 years and they are specific to the house in England. When we came back, I was 7 and was too big to be bathed in the kitchen sink, too tall to walk to the back of the cupboard, no longer teething and (since we returned in August), one of the first things I did on the day we came home, was to run to the end of the garden and pick blackberries.

19

Memory is a strange thing. I was 40 when I divorced, and for some reason, it washed away most of my childhood memories. 78 now, and they are still gradually coming back. About a year ago I was thinking about an old childhood friend so I looked him up and called him. He had no idea who I was. He said he was 4 when he moved away from my neighborhood and we were the same age. But he was shocked because I had vivid memories of his mother leaving the family for another man. I remember the car she was driving, her hair color and what she said to my friend as she was leaving. I remember my father’s tools being stolen and him deciding to close his shop and I was 3 at that time.

20

Wow, some great stories and remembrances here!

It depends on what the topic is, right? I tend to remember faces and names from long ago, but a movie that my wife and I watched? — I quickly forget those.

The earliest Super Bowl I remember watching was Super Bowl VI when the Dallas Cowboys beat the Miami Dolphins 24-3. That was January 1972 when I was 10.

I do remember faces and names from long ago. Once, in San Francisco I was registering for the San Francisco Marathon. Ahead of me in line was a lady that I was pretty sure that I recognized, so I asked her. No, she said, probably not because she’s not from here.

Oh yeah, where are you from? New England, she says.

Oh yeah, I’m from New England… It turns out we went to high school together over 25 years before. She was a year ahead of me but we did have one class together, Mrs. Boyle’s US History. We weren’t even good friends; we just shared one class. And I did not have a crush on her or anything like that. We did not hang out with the same friends. We just shared that one class.

That was now over 30 years ago and I still remember her name, Betsy M (I do remember her last name too). So Betsy M from Hall High School in West Hartford CT, class of 1978 (I’m 1979!), and Mrs. Boyle’s US History, are you here? If you’re here drop me a PM!

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I’ve only been to one high school reunion, since it’s so far away. It was in 1999, the 20th reunion. I went with my best friend and that was the only reunion either of us have attended, then or since. At that reunion, there were so many faces and names I was able to recall. It was uncanny.

I have a theory, that since I moved away I tend to remember those people even though I was never close to them. Because I miss that place and those times from my youth.

It’s a theory…