# Whats your earliest memory? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 4, 2001, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747 "2001-12-04T01:04:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![kambuckta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747/61 "2025-04-26T08:01:24Z")
I have a (non verifiable) memory of being put in my cot in the bedroom of my parents, probably \< 12 months old. After that, I had a tonsillectomy aged 4, and I recall the doctors, the anaesthetic, the recovery in the ward and all the various things that happened. I’m 64 now, so there ya go! ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747/62 "2025-04-26T10:01:14Z")
> [@UncleBill](#): > > Very mundane. A stone wall and a clothesline My first memory is equally mundane, my parents rented a faux-tudor style house, and I recall peering over my mother’s shoulder at the façade. I was less than one years old… which is unusual. Then a lot of blank until I was two - that’s when my sister was born - obviously.a big thing for any family. But I, as a two year old was WAY more interested in the “Dinky” toy cars my older brother and I got as compensation. I don’t recall anything of my sister as a baby, but I still own that toy car. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747/63 "2025-04-26T10:33:22Z")
I remember walking up a flight of stairs, specifically of an open two-story foyer, to put the topper on the Christmas tree. When as an adult I told my parents this, they ID’d the house and timeframe. I was just over two years old in 1980. My next earliest memories was of moving into the next house the following spring. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747/64 "2025-04-26T11:12:28Z")
I can remember feeling discomfort eating Marmite on toast, because some of my milk teeth were still growing in (probably molars, so maybe 18 to 24 months). I was an early talker and I remember saying ‘my teeth itch’. I can remember being bathed in the double kitchen sink, with my sister in the other sink - we used to pretend we were riding a train. I can’t have been more than 2 years old because my sister is nearly 3 years older than me. I have a few other such early memories - they are pretty well cemented in a period that must have been age 0 to 3, because we moved abroad when I was 3 and did not come back (to the same house) until I was nearly 8 - so some of the memories in that house can’t have been _after_ we went away, just because they involve me being able to easily walk into certain places like under the table or in the cupboard under the stairs. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747/65 "2025-04-26T11:52:16Z")
I was in the front seat of our car (I was born in the sixties and car seats weren’t a thing). We were in a shopping center parking lot; my mom was driving. We had stopped to let a family of black people cross in front of the car to go into the shops. My mom said, “I don’t like black people.” ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Finn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Mark\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Finn)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747/66 "2025-04-26T12:01:15Z")
I was barely three years old, but I still remember all the excitement about the Queen’s coronation (1953). ---
**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:** [April 26, 2025, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747/67 "2025-04-26T12:33:47Z")
Third or fourth time relating this one, just copied and pasted from one such earlier thread: 10 months here (as documented at least twice in older threads)-looked out my parents’ car window at a brilliant orange sunset which looked like a huge tiger to me (and yes that word popped into my head at the moment in question-I was speaking at 7 months). My parents had (in the prehistorical pre car seat days) put down a mattress in the back seat for me to sleep or play on, and I recall I was doing so with a toy when I looked up. Confirmed when I was an adult and my mom disclosed the date of said vacation (to Niagara Falls), along either US 2 or Interstate 90 near Erie PA. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747/68 "2025-04-26T12:42:08Z")
Outstanding! ::golf clap:: ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747/69 "2025-04-26T12:44:51Z")
I was around two, in my crib. The floor in the room was linoleum, with some kind of designs. My two year old brain decided one was a ghost. I don’t remember being scared, as the ghost was just sitting there, so I went back to sleep. I related the story to my Mom years later, and the location of the crib checked out. ---
**Author:** ![teelabrown](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/teelabrown/32/8412_2.png) [@teelabrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teelabrown)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747/70 "2025-04-26T13:02:28Z")
I remember my family being in the backyard at night, standing around in a group, looking at something up in the sky. My memory says they were looking to see if they could spot Sputnik. They tried to get me to look up, too, but I was frightened of the night sky and thought that Sputnik was some kind of big monstrous thing, so I just hid my face on my dad’s shoulder. Wikipedia says Sputnik was launched in 1957, so I was between two and three years old. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747/71 "2025-04-26T13:06:07Z")
She wasn’t some roly-poly, little bat-faced girl, was she? ---
**Author:** ![teelabrown](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/teelabrown/32/8412_2.png) [@teelabrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teelabrown)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747/72 "2025-04-26T13:10:14Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I can remember being bathed in the double kitchen sink Oh my gosh, you triggered a memory for me. I also remember this, and I had to have been very small, because our kitchen sink was dinky. Wow. ---
**Author:** ![chela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chela/32/21582_2.png) [@chela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chela)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747/73 "2025-04-26T15:52:58Z")
> [@kambuckta](#): > > After that, I had a tonsillectomy aged 4, and I recall the doctors, the anaesthetic, the recovery in the ward and all the various things that happened. I was about the same age, I was outside playing and called in by my Nan who was visiting. And then without any explanations I was whisked away to the hospital. Next memory was getting strapped down tight to a gurney and waiting in a hallway alone, I had the most terrible itch I couldn’t move to scratch. Then woke up in a hospital room where I felt pampered and indulged. ( lots of brothers annd sisters at home so I was the focus for once) Anytime I see a hospital sized bottle of mouthwash it brings back visceral memories of that time. Earliest memory had to be the hours I spent watching shadows move across the wall from my crib. When was mom coming to get me? 😭 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-earliest-memory/96747.md?page=3)