I can remember sitting on the kitchen table talking to my Mum while she was cooking or something. She told me that Dad would be comming home soon with the new car and then I can remember the green and white car passing the window beside me.
I would have been aged about two plus.
The kitchen table is now in my garden shed and I have a strange attachment to it.
I have tons of early memories, going back to when I was about three years old. I remember my friend teaching me to pump on the swings in nursery school, and other similar mundane things. I also spent my third summer in Hawaii and remember camping in a thunderstorm, and playing with the stuffed gorilla that lived in the cottage my parents rented.
I remember huge amounts from four on. I spent that summer in Mexico City and remember walking about Chapultapec Park with my parents and playing in my cousins’ house. Discussions today with my childhood friends lead me to believe that I remember further back and better than most of them.
The earliest memory I can specifically pin a date to is watching the Los Angeles Rams and the Pittsburgh Steelers play in the Super Bowl. I remember my dad was rooting for the Rams simply because they were the underdogs. I was six. I probably have earlier memories than that, but nothing to give me a time reference.
I was in the 2-year-old class at preschool, it was naptime, and my friend bit me on the finger. I told the teacher about it and she told me to go back to sleep. The friend takes it a step further: he remembers why he bit me.
Two-year-olds are weird…
Running right off of the top of our stairs. I had been running back and forth to my mom and the closet at the top of the stairs. One time I turned only half-way and ran right off of the top of the stairs. You know when Wile E. Coyote runs off of a cliff and hangs there for a second before he falls? It felt just like that. My mother says I was less than 18 months old.
Yes. My earliest memory is a good one. It was christmas, and I must have been sitting almost under the tree, because it loomed above me. I remember the lights reflected in the shiny ornaments. I was old enough to open a package by myself, so I was probably three or so. I opened a round box which contained wooden blocks in primary colors. I remember the clinking sound they made, and the "new wood" smell they had. But the color made the biggest impression on me. And christmas is a definite break in routine for a small child.---TabithinaMy earliest memory is of the night I got caught redhanded stealing my newborn brother’s bottle from his crib.
Oh the shame! I can still feel the redfaced guiltiness…frustration too with the failure of my stealthy plan…it never occurred to me that my parents had been finding the empty bottle in my bed every morning.
I was 3ish.
I’ve many early memories, but can’t really determine which was the first. They all date from about the age of two.
In line with what another poster said, traumatic events are the most vivid:
Cut through the 120V line to the transformer on my Dad’s American Flyer train set at Christmas, while it was plugged in
Taken to the hospital to have my stomach pumped out (on two different occasions!), for having eaten a bunch of aspirin
Having the croup and being forced to sit in a bathroom full of steam while drinking a shot of whiskey; worst thing I ever tasted
Hospitalized for bronchitis (not related to the above; actually this may be my earliest memory as I was told this occurred when I was about 18 months)
Being terrified by an electrical storm.
Jeez, looking over these I’m amazed I ever made it to my third year. I find I like whiskey a little more now than I did at two, however.
I remember being bathed in the afternoon, instead of the usual night time. The strangeness of the time is overridden by the fact that I was happy/surprised because my mom was being nice to me and seemed to be paying attention to me more so than usual. The feeling with the memory is like, wow, this is weird…happy, but cautious. Turns out it was my birthday. 3rd, I believe. I still feel that way about my mom. Actually, it’s finally to the point where we don’t speak anymore.
When my daughter was about 3 or 4, in the middle of a supermarket she started telling me all about the day she was born. She remembered a lot of details, it was really a trip. She talked about a lot of blood and me screaming, even words I’d said. She brought it up a few times over the next couple of years. Now she doesn’t remember the birth, but she talks about being breastfed. She may not remember though, she just knows she was breastfed.
A girl
for some strange reason, I have blocked out/twisted my childhood around… I should remember things from at least being around like, 2, seeing as I am only 15, but I do not think I had a bad childhood… but I can’t remember, so how the hell am I 'sposed to know… ha…
Ad Noctum, I feel the same way sometimes…
I remember hearing someone say “Let there be light!” I was wallowing in the primordial slime at the time.
I remember my mom carrying me up the steps to our friend’s split level house, and her friend offering her an M&M from a crystal-look container with a spear top. My brother and the friend’s son ran off to his bedroom to play, and I crawled after them. They didn’t want me to come in the room, so they put a large teddy bear in my way. I sat down in front of it and cried and cried. I even remember the floorplan of the house we were in. This happened before I could walk, so I was less than a year old.
I remember looking at the Panda Bears at the Omaha Zoo. My mom started walking away, so I toddled over and grabbed her hem and followed her. People started laughing at me, so I looked up. Terror! This isn’t my mommy! Mommy and Daddy and everyone were still over by the Pandas, laughing at me. Such humiliation! I must have been two or so.
I gots more.
–Tim
Nine months?
Dad left me in the fenced backyard for about thirty second to get a smoke or a cup of coffee. I fell and got the scar over my eye on the concrete covered sewer. I remember seeing the concrete coming towards me, screaming and Dad running out onto the back porch wearing tan pants and a white tee shirt.
Everything was OK then. 
Not in chronological order. Maybe in order of strangeness?
My dad singing “The Bear Went Over the Mountain (to see what he could see)” at bedtime
Mom murmuring “woofwoofwoofwoofwoof” to me (in a reassuring, cuddling way, she wasn’t mimicking dogs here)
Getting taken to the observation deck of the Empire State Building where my dad worked at the time. He tried to give me a lift so I could get a better view and I distincly remember freaking out at the mere possibility of falling.
And then there was the time I went to the hospital for some sort of surgery on my penis - the hole was the wrong size, or something. I remember a nurse putting some sort of ointment on it, and I remember thinking it ‘tickled’.
My folks say that as a toddler I was, for whatever reason, often reluctant to go to the bathroom. So the doctor gave me some pills which would make my urine funny colors so I’d be more interested in the whole process. I definitely remember peeing blue once!
A few weeks after my third birthday, Mom, Dad and I moved to Manhattan from Teaneck NJ. Entering our new building (Washington Square Village, on W 4th st. for you New Yawkers out there) my parents gave me the difficult yet crucial task of pressing the button in the elevator. “ninth floor,” they told me. “Number nine.”
Now, I knew quite well what a “9” looked like. After a second or two, I even managed to find it on the elevator wall. However, with a cold finger of dread, the severity of the situation struck me - there was no way I could complete my mission. I was outmatched by an oversized world, my intellect overstriding my stature. There was no way I could reach that button.
But not all was lost. Deciding to cut my losses, I was determined to make thw bwst withwhat I had. My cool, logical mind realized that although I could not reach my objective, I could achieve the next best thing. Thus, with steel in my heart and snot in my nose, I did the only thing a three-year old could do, under the circumstances.
I pressed the 6.
Looking up at my parents and the horde of giants which had filled the elevator during my ordeal, I stated defiantly “6 is 9 upside-down!”
Everybody laughed. Dad picked me up and told me I was a very smart little boy.
Upon reaching our new apartment, I saw it had a big “J” on its door. My name begins with “J”. I was ecstatic.
All in all, it was a good day.
my past attempt at this thread…
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=35047