I have a couple of memories that, according to my family, would date from the time I was 2-2 1/2 years old.
Getting a shot at a doctor’s office and my mom trying to distract me while the nurse gave me the shot. I think I was around 2 or 3
I have a fairly distinct memory of standing in my baby bed and sucking/chewing on the edge of the headboard so sometime between 1 and 2?
I also sort of remember the experience of sitting in my high chair with the tray latched on in front of me.
I try not to think about childhood memories .
I have flashes of early memories that may just be constructed in my mind due to hearing stories about events that occurred when I was young.
Two very solid and distinct memories:
The house where I grew up had a second story with a wooden railing. There was a point halfway up this staircase that was missing a post. We called this “The hole in the stairs”
My older brother came back on his boot camp leave from the USMC. I was walking down the stairs and he poked his head through this opening and scared me. I rolled down the rest of the staircase. Looking back at the dates, I was two years old when this happened and was just about to turn three.
Skip ahead to mid summer. There was a family picnic at a lake. My older sisters were supposed to be watching me but was on a floating dock with a group of boys. It did not look too far. I absolutely remember thinking I could just walk out to her. I very nearly drowned. I remember very clearly seeing the light filtering through the water and then going dark. I was three years old that summer, My older sisters were eleven and thirteen. I remember this very clearly. I was not sure how old I was when it happened until recently.
The two older sisters in this incident have passed away, as has my brother. My oldest sister is still with us, and I asked her about the drowning incident a few months ago
I am 63, My surviving sister is 79.
It’s a visual memory, and even now that I have language, it’s very hard to put into words. But I’m lying semi reclined in a tiny round space with a warm orangey red glow from my right. I’m sucking my left thumb and with my right pinky finger, I’m doing this funny wave like motion against the soft glowing wall to my left. It’s very soothing. I like the light, and I like the wall.
I’ve been a thumbsucker my whole life, and that little wave with my finger is something that I did as a young child on the wall of my bedroom, but it was an old habit even then. For years I’ve seen that memory, and knew that’s where the finger motion came from, but couldn’t quite put it together. Then some years ago I took mushrooms, and in my tranced out state I thought I figured it out, but…surely, not…
Then my mom told me that my dad used to hold a bright flashlight on her pregnant belly to calm me down when I was kicking her at night and she couldn’t sleep.
More early memories:
I didn’t have a high chair. I had, well, it was like a card table but heavier duty, with a square cutout in the middle where a seat was suspended. And there was a metal seat with no legs but suction cups and a strap so mom could bathe me in the kitchen sink.
I remember my older brother laying on the living room carpet between me and my dad sitting on the sofa and dad encouraging me to walk over my brother by stepping on his stomach to come to him. And I was afraid to step on my brother.
I was 2 or so and took my first steps chasing a kitten I was playing with … I was sitting on the sidewalk in front of grandmas house playing with a kitten from her shed cat and the kitten took off and I stood up and was toddling down the street saying kitty …
I remember everyone rushing twords me and grandma saying "see I told you hed walk when he wanted to " grandma kept that cat for 10 years in the yard/shed …
I had this memory that for the longest time I wasn’t sure actually happened or not. I was very young, and I was sitting on my mom’s lap while she was talking to someone. We were in the kitchen of the house we lived in until I was about six, I remember the bluebirds on the kitchen curtains. All of a sudden the back door bangs open and my dad comes rolling/stumbling/tripping in with a big gust of very cold wind and snow.
I asked my mom recently if this really happened or if I had imagined it. Mom said it really happened. It was during the “Blizzard of '78”, and I was 2 1/2. Mom said she was on the phone with my grandmother trying to convince her not to send my grandfather out into the storm to get us because we were fine. Mom was talking to Gran with me on her lap when Dad came busting in the back door. He couldn’t get in the front door because the snow was too deep.
Mom thought Dad was staying at work during the storm but Mom’s youngest brother had gone out in his Jeep to go fetch Dad because Uncle didn’t want Mom to be home alone. Mom was also about 7 months pregnant with my sister at that time. Gran was freaking out then because she didn’t realize that Uncle had left the house. He was a teenager at the time.
I have lots of other memories of that house but that one is almost certainly my earliest memory.
Playing with a toy truck, trying to run it up the front leg of mom’s ironing board.
This was a wooden board; the front leg was two sticks glued together at the base. IOW: the leg was a very long triangle; the sticks were the same space as the width of the truck’s wheels in only one spot.
I studied that spot and its relationship to the wheels for some time.
Oddly, I remember this as being in a house that I did not see until I was way too old to be playing with toy trucks.
I have a skull scar from the first house (I have no memory of getting it), but this is undoubtedly from that house.
Watching Bugs Bunny. Based on where the TV was in the living room I had to be 2 years old or so.
Probably getting a smallpox shot when I was about 1 year old. I’ll never forget that big ugly needle coming at me.
3 yr, 9 months old.
Day my little brother was killed.
I was sent out to flag in the ambulance which was coming even though he was already dead.
June 6th, 1947
Mom was pregnant with my next brother,
Other memories but no way to date them as my parents could think of several times I could have picked it up from. Two are from earlier I believe but none of my 6 other siblings ever talked of early memories.
I was second out of 8 with 7 surviving until my older sister who died recently.
I never know whether I can trust what I believe to be early childhood memories. I think I remember walking with my father and (for some reason) asking him what year it was (or it somehow coming up in my prattle), and hearing that it was 1951, so I would have been 3. I’m much surer about remembering hearing the radio announcement of George VI’s death, and running upstairs to tell my mother, who was shining up the bathroom taps. I was just a month short of my fourth birthday
The morning of my forth birthday. We had just moved into the house a month earlier. My mother and sister were sitting on the couch in front room when I came down the stairs.
November 24, 1964. I remember being desperate to comfort my crying mother. I remember the drum beat and hushed voices. Also the riderless horse. The only specific part I remember was John-John saluting because of my mom’s reaction. I was 26 months old.
Possibly earlier was the time we were riding in the car when I announced to the family that I could hear the giants walking. I had folded my ears over and imagined my heartbeats were footsteps.