# What's your earliest memory? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 28, 2007, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299 "2007-10-28T02:51:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/1 "2007-10-28T02:51:24Z")
I think mine (or one of them, or one I made up) is of my ailing grandfather. He was 95 at the time and it was 1984. I must have been about 2 and a half. He would give us cinammon lozenges and I thought they were the same as what you got in Communion at mass, but because I hadn’t made my First Holy Communion yet I didn’t know then that lozenges are tastier than the body of Christ. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/2 "2007-10-28T02:53:07Z")
I remember when we traded in our green Plymouth for a blue one. This had to be around 1956, when I was four. ---
**Author:** ![Fern\_Forest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/71c47a/32.png) [@Fern\_Forest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fern_Forest)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/3 "2007-10-28T02:59:04Z")
I remember the walls shaking from a 6.9 earthquake when I was about three. They were painted green and some knick-knacks were on the shelf. That’s the whole memory. ---
**Author:** ![Glazer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a88e57/32.png) [@Glazer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Glazer)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/4 "2007-10-28T03:12:55Z")
Laying on the kitchen floor next to my mother learning to read. One of the few memories I have of my mother. I was 3 at the time. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/5 "2007-10-28T03:18:35Z")
Seeing the concrete culvert in the backyard come up when I fell and struck my forehead. Dad had gone into the house and left me for thirty seconds in the fenced backyard. He would soon faint in the ER when they sutured my forehead. 🙂 I thought I was much younger, Mother said I was three. ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/6 "2007-10-28T03:21:50Z")
I have a half-dozen vague memories of my childhood in Alabama, including walking across a small field to our neighbor’s house because that’s where my mom was, and we’ve not lived there since I was five. I’m guessing I’d’ve been four at the time? ---
**Author:** ![freckafree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/freckafree/32/3050_2.png) [@freckafree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/freckafree)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/7 "2007-10-28T03:42:09Z")
I have many memories of sleeping in a crib in my parents’ room. I remember having croup, and my mom making a “croup tent” (a sheet supported on cotton twine strung over the top of the crib rails, so the steam from the vaporizor would be concentrated within). I was the youngest of six in a small house, so I may well have slept in a crib past the age when most kids moved to a bed. ---
**Author:** ![MadPansy64](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@MadPansy64](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MadPansy64)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/8 "2007-10-28T04:12:57Z")
I remember drinking a strawberry shake out of a glass so tall I had to stand up on the seat to reach the straw. The air smelled of dust, strawberries, camphor and Shalimar. The walls and booth were dark wood, the table was red-flecked formica. I was wearing a frilly pink dress and pretty shoes. According to my grandmother, it was when I went with her to pick up her new glasses, and have lunch at the Woolworths. I turned three a few weeks later. ---
**Author:** ![fishbicycle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aeb1de/32.png) [@fishbicycle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fishbicycle)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/9 "2007-10-28T04:17:20Z")
I remember what our first house looked like. The kitchen was yellow with green-grey tiled wainscoting. The bathroom was off the kitchen, next to the stairwell, which had a landing and turn as you went upstairs. I know where the living room furniture was. I remember sitting in my high chair. I remember the door into the next apartment, and that they had hardwood floors and blonde wood '50s design tables, and I played with the kid who lived there. We moved out of that place when I was two. ---
**Author:** ![Khampelf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Khampelf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khampelf)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/10 "2007-10-28T04:18:24Z")
I can remember something that must have happened when I was two y.o. or less. I was in one of those baby jumpers (not the garment, a contraption that hangs from the ceiling and supports the child upright, so they can jump up and down before they can walk) I jumped so hard the wooden dowel that it hung from came off of it’s hook in the ceiling and fell on my head. I was most upset about it, as I recall. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/11 "2007-10-28T04:23:50Z")
When my parents and I were on vacation, my father asked the housekeeper if he could make something in the kitchen, got permission and started cutting up bell peppers. I wandered in and asked if I could have one and he handed me a cut piece…only it wasn’t a bell pepper, it was a hot pepper. I remember asking him for a piece and then I remember the view of the ceiling tiles spinning as I turned around and around in a panic with my head tilted back, gasping for air. The pepper fell out of my mouth and left a big welt on my lip and cheek were it touched. I remember my dad trying to get me to drink milk, and the adults in the house yelling and running around to find some milk, but the only milk to be had on the island was powdered milk, which I didn’t like (and to this day the smell of powdered milk gives me panic attacks.) From the same trip, I have another visual memory, of my own little toddler toes being slowly covered with black sand from the volcanic beach as the water rushed back and forth. And the final one, same trip, of picking ooey gooey white (!) cocoa beans out of their slime. I always thought cocoa beans were nearly the size of golf balls, but now I understand that I remember them in scale with my tiny hands at the time! I was, according to mom, not quite two on that trip. I don’t have any other memories until around kindergarten. ---
**Author:** ![Darryl\_Lict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7cd45c/32.png) [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/12 "2007-10-28T04:36:00Z")
Snow in L.A. I was about 4. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/13 "2007-10-28T04:40:49Z")
3 or 4, when a big kid at my daycare threw my spiderman toy on the roof. I didn’t cry. ---
**Author:** ![fachverwirrt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/94ad74/32.png) [@fachverwirrt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fachverwirrt)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/14 "2007-10-28T04:44:17Z")
Going with my mother to pick up my sister at nursery school. I was two. I remember my sister was really mad because some boy had knocked down her wall that she had built out of the big cardboard bricks. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/15 "2007-10-28T04:48:07Z")
[QUOTE=fachverwirrt] I remember my sister was really mad because some boy had knocked down her wall that she had built out of the big cardboard bricks. [/QUOTE] [Digression]Men are pigs.[/Digression] ---
**Author:** ![Secret\_Volcano\_Lair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Secret\_Volcano\_Lair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Secret_Volcano_Lair)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/16 "2007-10-28T04:54:54Z")
Coming back from a grocery shopping trip with my mom and grandmother when I wasn’t quite 3 years old. We were in a white pickup truck…my grandmother tossed a cigarette out the window, which caught the paper grocery bags in the back on fire. When they realized what happened, they pulled over to the side of the highway and had to extinguish the fire using 2 liter bottles of diet coke. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/17 "2007-10-28T04:59:33Z")
I’m in my crib, as a toddler, and wanting like nothing else to get the fuck out of there. I’m looking up at the ceiling and at the white bars that surround me, and thinking, “THIS ISN’T FAIR!” No, I’m not joking, I’m dead serious. I do remember this far back. Although I didn’t think of it in terms of the English language back then, the sentiment was the same - “GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/18 "2007-10-28T05:05:07Z")
[QUOTE=Argent Towers] I’m in my crib, …THIS ISN’T FAIR!" [/QUOTE] You, Sir or Madame, should have a job in government. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Asimovian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asimovian/32/172_2.png) [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/19 "2007-10-28T05:13:18Z")
Having a nightmare about the CBS “eye” logo they used to display prominently (maybe they still do – I don’t watch CBS for anything). When I was a kid and about three years old, they would just display the white logo by itself on a black screen when transitioning from commercial breaks, and it creeped me the hell out. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2007, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299/20 "2007-10-28T05:16:11Z")
10 Months. We were in my Dad’s Cadillac heading towards Buffalo and Ontario in midsummer, and in those days before car seats they put a crib mattress in the back where I played and slept. The sun was setting, and all I can say is that my consciousness “clicked on”, as I looked up at the sky and immediately became mesmerized by what looked to me to be a huge orange tiger in the clouds (yes the word “tiger” entered my brain at that moment). Confirmed the date with a much later conversation with my mother. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/424299.md?page=2)