My mom in a rocking chair, pregnant with my sister. I would’ve been about 4.
I think some of my earliest “memories” are dreams, so lets ignore those. I can remember seeing my sister’s first steps, which would make me 2½. I can remember seeing our garage fall down in a wind storm, when I must have been 3. And I can remember when a friend who was one year older than me started school, so I was 4. Other memories are in amongst those, like seeing half a pig in the kitchen*, and going on a drive and getting stuck in teh snow so we had to sleep in the car. I’m unsure of those dates, though.
*We lived in the country. My Dad was once paid with a side of a pig.
The earliest I can put a definite date to is when my grandparents came to visit us just before my little sister was born–it would have been right around my 2nd birthday, the end of March 1966. They gave me a little suitcase with a fuzzy lamb on it and some chewing gum.
I think my earliest memory is being in a crib staring at a mobile above me ( I don’t think I was a new born or anything, but obviously still at least a toddler ). However I’ve often wondered if that is an “imagined” memory that got stuck in my head via seeing it somewhere else at an early age.
The first reliable memory is of the big bronze elk statue that used to stand by the Elks Lodge in Somerville, Massachusetts. Since that was pre-nursery school ( which I started attending after we moved to Dorchester ), I was probably somewhere between two and three.
In a crib. I had a dream about snakes and woke up scared and screaming. My dad came and picked me up.
Not sure if it’s really my earliest memory but I remember playing with two brightly coloured plush animals on the bed railings one morning, while looking through my bedroom’s skylight (grey clouds). I don’t remember ever seeing these toys again so I must have been very young.
I have two memories that I believe may have been the first thing that happened that I remember.
Mom always bathed my sister (two years older) and me in the same bathwater. She would add a capful of dish soap while running the water, then let us play in the water for a while, while she went off to do other chores. She would come back later and dry us off.
Once, when she came back into the bathroom, there was a turd in the bathwater. I don’t recall who was actually the culprit, but I recall that the wrong one was blamed (though there was no punishment).
The other incident also took place in the bathroom, during bath time. I can recall kicking and fighting while my mother washed the glans of my penis. I recall knowing that it would hurt, so it must have happened before, but I have no recollection of other times.
Of these two memories, I believe that the second that I related was the earlier of the two, since I do not recall having that struggle during that bathing episode.
My first memory is of waking from a nightmare. I had been dreaming of a frightening buzzing electric light on the end of my crib, and there were jagged lightning symbols next to it, and these ‘clutches’, clutching hands, coming down from the top corners of my field of vision. I woke up scared, and looked around, and saw the normal blue paint of my crib. I don’t remember how old I was.
Mom said that when I was very young, I used to talk about the clutches and even draw then coming down from the top corners of the page.
It happened that I was born 3 months premature and spent the first few months of my life in an incubator.
Years later, I saw such an incubator on display. There they were, underneath the clear cover over the bed: the electric light at the foot of the bed, and gloves reaching inward from the side where the nurse could reach in and adjust me without breaking the environmental seal. Did I have memories of my time in the incubator? Not as such, but there definitely seem to have been effects.
In my earliest memory, it is dark and I am standing up in my crib. I see a mesh bag of blocks hanging from the doorknob of the closet door. In the dark my mind sees it as a moose head and I am very frightened by it.
By being in a crib and standing I am guessing I pulled myself up so I put my age around 12 - 16 months. I’m guessing I would have gotten the moose head image from watching Captain Kangaroo.
I also have a distinct memory of my mother bringing my little sister home after being born, that would put me at 26 months.
I’m guessing around age two. The upper kitchen cabinet door was open and I saw, on a high shelf, my old baby bottles. I remember a sense of pride that I was a Big Boy now and didn’t use those bottles any longer.
My mom wouldn’t have held on to the bottles for long after no longer needing them so it must have been relatively soon after I had learned to exclusively use a cup.
My most concrete early memory is of being driven to day care by my father and asking why we had to stop and wait for so long for the school buses that were picking up kids. I had to be either 3 or 4.
I also have a more vague memory of the fact that where I lived from birth to 3 years old, the area behind the backyard was used to launch hot-air balloons, but I don’t have any specific memory of a particular event. I have another vague memory of the general plan of the house we lived in there, but nothing particularly concrete. The babysitter I had when I lived there had kids old enough to play video games, and I remember them playing Qbert, but again that’s not any particular instance but a vague concept that it happened.
My earliest memory is from when I was around 4. My mom had just had a miscarriage, and was still in the hospital. We (me and my older brother) weren’t able to go up and see her for some reason (hospital rules at the time? I’m not sure). My father took us out to the parking lot, and my mom waved at us from the hospital window, and we waved back. I’m pretty sure I was too young to really understand what was going on, but obviously the memory has stuck with me all these years later for a reason.
It all turned out okay in the end. My mom ended up having my younger brother about two years later, and I’m convinced the miscarried baby was going to be an asshole, while my actual younger brother is cool.
I must have been two years (and a month) when my parents brought me with them to a neighbors’ (who owned a TV-set) to watch the first manned moon landing. I guess they had spent some time to build up my expectations: what I remember is trying to stay awake while watching some grainy figures slowly moving over the b/w screen…
I’m happy to keep a memory of it though – I guess I’m one of the youngest who have experienced it!
I remember being afraid of a toy wind-up turtle that was walking across the floor towards me so I ran and hid behind the refrigerator. My mother said that happened when I was about three.
Know I’ve posted this before here, anyway…
We were driving to Canada along either I-95 or US20, in NY state, with Lake Erie to our left.
I recall I was playing with a toy or something-this was in the early 60’s, the days before car seats, and my parents simply put a mattress down in the back seat of my dad’s Cadillac for me to sit and play on.
I recall looking up, and gazing into the sunset to the left of the highway. I saw a huge orange cloud, which to my young imagination looked just like a tiger-that word, yes, entered my mind at that moment. I was utterly transfixed.
I asked my mom about it years later, and she confirmed the details-we were driving to Buffalo and then to Canada on a vacation. She even knew the date we went, too.
Turned out I was 10 months old. Note I started speaking at 7 months-I probably saw a picture of a tiger in a book they read me, and simply imagined it in the clouds.
The gray siding on the house we moved out of when I was 4.
I have a memory of being placed in a bassinet on the floor next to my paternal grandmother’s bed and someone turning her head for her to see me, she had a severe disability, likely it would come under the MS label now but then it was mysterious and she had spent long periods in various countries seeking cures only coming home to die. She died when I was 4 months old so I know it likely isn’t true memory but a memory of stories told later on but I can still see it as though I was aware at the time. Then nothing until the shock of finding Dad home one workday afternoon lying on the floor in front of the tv watching the moon walk. I was 4, he wasn’t home much and left for good not long after. I had no idea of the significance of the fuzzy black and white images he was transfixed by.
I remember being inside my crib. The slats were a light colored wood. I also remember once being in a crib with chrome metal sides and the white sheets had a purple glow. I had my tonsils and adenoids taken out for my 2nd birthday, that was probably from then.
Several possibilities:
Sticking my finger in an electrical outlet. I wasn’t yet five. About the same time, naming my grandfather’s boat (Summersalt). My friend across the street who had a boxer. Getting a new car, switching from a green Plymouth to a blue one.
The oldest memory I can date is Alaska becoming a state. I was five. My mother told me, and I asked, “What was it before?”
I’ve posted my earliest memory recollections here before, only to be put down by “experts” for not possibly being able to remember things that happened that early in life. Loftus, false memories, implanted memories, Edgar Cayce, all that will explain why nobody in this thread actually remembers what they think they remember.