My mother told me a story only a few years ago: she and my aunt were giving me a bath when I was two years old, and suddenly I got up, made myself an erection and yelled “Look what I can do!” She told me that she and my aunt had a good laugh, just like me when I heard that story. It didn’t leave any impact on all three involved parties.
That wasn’t my earliest memory, which is this:
I’m sitting in a stroller and someone’s pushing me. It’s an old brown wicker stroller, obviously a hand-me-down, and a few pieces of wicker are sticking out. There’s a huge greenhouse across the street from our apartment building, with a large koi pond in front. There’s a walkway going across the koi pond to the greenhouse. I’m being pushed across that walkway, and I look to either side at the huge fish. Then we enter the greenhouse.
Years later, I mentioned this memory to my mom and aunt, and they both verified that we moved from that location before I was a year old and never returned. So I was less than a year old when I crossed the koi pond in the old wicker stroller.
I’ve looked on Google Maps. The greenhouse is still there, but no koi pond. And our apartment building is now a park.
Ah, bath time! My sister was born 15 months after I was, and our brother 15 months after that, so my mom had 3 in rapid succession. I have vague memories of her putting all 3 of us in the tub together, and we always fought for who got the deep end - probably a whole inch deeper than the shallower end. 
It was a big deal when we were allowed to bathe, then shower, on our own! Altho Mom insisted it shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes. I’m sure that was to save hot water, especially after my last 2 sisters were born. Seven people can really tax a water heater!
I was about eight, so my best friend would have been nine. I had some sort of “book for girls” type book that had some games and activities and such and also had a couple recipes for homemade hair treatments. I was over at my friend’s house and she had all the ingredients we needed for one of them (like… olive oil, egg, lemon juice. That kind of thing), so we decided to try it.
We had no idea what it was supposed to do. It didn’t say in the description. Was it going to dye our hair a different color? Make it curly? Make it longer? Give it highlights? So we were absolutely giddy and a little scared to try it, daring each other to go first and giggling the whole time in her bathroom.
Well, of course, it was only meant to “nourish” your hair and what it did was make it SUPER greasy… which also made it appear slightly darker. We were beside ourselves with excitement- it worked! My hair is darker! Look, it totally is!
When I got home and showed my mom, she was… somewhat less thrilled than I was.
We were probably about 5 & 6, my brother & I. First nice spring day. We got on the crossbar of our swing set to yell thru the hollow pipe that made the top. It echoed neat. I yelled CAPTAIN VIDEO!! A million wasps flew out & stung the crap out of my brother’s face.
I remember it was before I was school age. Possibly 4yo. I was sitting on the branch of a tree. My baby brother was below me in a diaper. He wanted me to come down. I was so happy to be in the tree and no one could touch me.
Well…until my oldest brother came and jerked me off the branch telling me I wasn’t gonna get hurt while he was babysitting.
When I was about 5 years old we had the neighbor kids over for a “movie.” It was actually an Easy Show Projector presentation. We had Hi-C and Jiffy Pop while watching the slides under a blanket. It was epic!
I distinctly remember my Mom carrying me in to the apartment my folks rented in Montrose, (Glendale, L.A. County). There was a Christmas tree lighted up. My family later moved to Pacoima, (hello Senegoid), in 1957 so I was 2 years old for that memory.
When I was about 4, Mom bought a used Singer treadle sewing machine, and found a stamp from Portugal in a notions drawer, and gave it to me and explained what it was. Somehow it got saved with things like baby teeth, and when I got my first stamp collection kit, My Portugal Carlos I green was gotten out. I was disappointed that such items were so common, but it remained a central treasure.
Does it make me a bad person that I laughed at this?
If so… worth it. Guess I’m a bad person.
When I was about 3, we had the measles visit our house. There were four of us kids including a baby under a year old, all with the measles at once. This meant that Mom couldn’t do all that parenting stuff alone and Dad had to pitch in with the diaper changing, brow mopping and Caladryl applications (so we wouldn’t scratch). When Mom gave us evening baths, we all used the same two inches of water I usually shared with one of the brothers. But when Dad bathed us, it was one at a time, with deep water, games, and general silliness. Therefore, I identified being sick as a treat for a couple of years after. But by age 6, I knew it was all over. I was in school and old enough to bathe myself.
Susan was my girlfriend. When she came over, I would get cookies for both of us and come back out with them and we’d sit on the steps together and eat them. I have ancient photographs of us sitting there with my arm around her.
My sister was two years younger than me. She was mostly potty trained despite being only two, but sometimes things misfired. She was with us then suddenly stood up but too late, wet herself. We were in our sandbox at the time. She started crying and ran inside to be changed.
Susan and I looked at each other, at the wet sand, and shrugged and made mud pies together using the wet sand.
In the small city I grew up in there was a small local 7Up bottling plant. It was about 5 blocks from our house, so not too far for me to go as a very young boy.
In the summer every day we would walk down to the plant and they would give us a 16 ounce paper cup of freshly made soda. It was really cold, super bubbly, and super good.
This was in the early/mid-60’s until about 1975. Then the plant just turned into a warehouse for soda that was made elsewhere and they didn’t have any fountain soda to give out. But it was great while it lasted.
No, and you’re not the only one.
When I was about 6, one of my cousins was getting married, so I got a new pair of shoes for the occasion. Somehow I got it into my head that little boys wore brown shoes, like my new ones, but grown-up men wore black shoes. So I got out my father’s black shoe polish and polished my new brown shoes. Obviously there’s a big difference between shoe POLISH and shoe DYE. The shoes were ruined. I got severely punished and had to wear my old (brown) shoes to the wedding.
Oh, Panache, my brother had saddle oxfords.(new Easter shoes) I guess they were a thing. But he wanted them black.
We found black spray paint in the garage. He wore the shoes and I sprayed them black. Of course his legs and socks and my hands were all spray painted, as well. Man oh, man we got in trouble for that.
I can still see my Mother trying not to laugh and telling Daddy to punish us. He made us sweep the garage.
When I was 4 or so some movie theater or other was showing My Little Chickadee and my dad decided we’d all go see it. My older sister was talking about it and I had a meltdown because why was it [Sister’s name] Little Chickadee and not [my name] Little Chickadee.
I travelled a bit with my dear grandmother, who drove everywhere, fearlessly. We went to stay with her cousin on a little farm in Quebec, a little gray-haired lady, and her husband and some other relatives. Everyone spoke French, which I didn’t understand. They had some chickens, cooked traditional Canadian recipes like pea soup and maple tart, and to my astonishment the black and white tv showed movies with nudity! I was shocked! I had such a wonderful time, all by myself, just walking down the empty winding road or jumping from the hayloft in the barn into a bed of hay…the next time I went, I was 13 or so, and a French speaking girl my age was there. We would sit in the pickup truck and listen to the radio, ‘My Boyfriend’s Back’ was the most popular song of the day, and we would sing along. Great memories.
When I was around 5 or 6, I was sick enough that I had to stay in bed for a couple of days. Mom did my hair in 2 little ponytails. I broke the rule about “No chewing gum in bed” and while lying on my back, the gum fell out of my mouth and got stuck in one pony tail. OH NO!!! :eek:
So being the problem-solver I was, I found some scissors and cut the gum out. Of course, later when Mom took out the rubber bands, I got another haircut…
Then there was my other problem-solving-so-I-wouldn’t-get-in-trouble episode. I was maybe 6 or 7 for this one.
Our neighborhood was full of chain-link fences (typical of row houses in suburban Baltimore) and we were forbidden to climb them. Well, I climbed the fence in Mary Ann’s yard and was sitting on top, then I decided to jump down. My shorts snagged and I ended up with a hole in the seat.
Mom used to have a cigar box full of fabric squares. She also had a Necchi sewing machine that I’d never used, but I watched her making and mending clothes so I knew how it worked. I selected a pink square that was pretty close to the color of my pink shorts. And I sewed the patch on all by myself. Somehow, Mom figured it out. Probably because I put the patch on the outside. And the machine was threaded with dark green thread…
I’m still having intermittent giggle fits over that one.
I remember a day my brother and I were sent to scrub the back porch. We hosed it down with water and added some dish soap, then worked up lots of lather with brooms. We were pretending to be tooth fairies scrubbing a big tooth. (Shut up.) Then we started skidding around in the soap trying to skate, and naturally busted our butts a few times. At one point, my grandma stuck her head out the door and told us to be careful or we might fall. We thought that was the funniest thing.