Whats your earliest memory?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I’m not sure which are my earliest memories because when we came here I was like 1 year old and we owned a small Maw and Paw motel along the highway. I recall standing in the white dirt driveway by the neon sign, which was in a round, brick base that held weeds. It was a cool night, I saw a lot of adult legs, the bricks were almost head high and almost no cars pulled by on the road. (Now, that road is busy 24/7) I recall being pleased with the bright colors of the sign.

Then there is me sitting chin high in a parsley patch on the green, green lawn of a small set of row-type apartment buildings, single story. I understand that those were units left over from WW2 called the Air base Apartments. Each had a sidewalk running in front of them and were surrounded by tall pines. I recall it being shady there and friendly.

Chats with my mother inform me that I was about 2 when we lived there, and those apartments are gone now. We all lived in the cramped motel when we first arrived, in the house/office with us kids often sleeping on the screened in porch. (Almost no crime then, very little traffic on US1, balmy nights, and the city was very small. I was actually not on the state maps then.) After the first year, since our grandparents had arrived with us and two families living in a place built for one, caused disputes, my Mom and Dad went to the apartments and my Dad got a job working elsewhere since the motel did not pay enough to support us all.

As far as I can recall, I was between 2 and 3 years old, maybe even as young as one but I recall how big things looked as if I were laying on the ground, looking up. Plus, Parsley does not grow high and I recall being shoulder deep or so in this patch, so I must have been pretty small.

I recall nothing of living up north in New Jersey, where we came from 48 years ago.

However, my folks made an excellent choice of towns to live in because this one, now up to 90,000 people from the original 2000 years ago, has always been a safe place. However, I no longer even know where the motel was, though we only kept it for a couple of years. Actually, my grand parents owned it. Jewel Court was the name, and it consisted of a main, wooden house and several wooden cabins.

From a kid’s perspective, it was a nice place.

42

I remember being around 3 years old and pushing my little sister out of a twin stroller. My younger brother and sister are twins. My parents said this happened.

[hijack] This is a story my parents say really happened the day my younger sister and brother came home from the hospital. I was sitting on my Grandmother’s lap in the kitchen of my childhood home. This house had a really high front porch with many steps so my mother and the newborns were brought in through the back of the house which sat low, into the kitchen. The crib for my brother and sister was set up in the kitchen as this was early March and still kinda cold in north Georgia. Here’s the setup…I am about 19 months old and my Grandmother had just fed me…full 19 month old…remember that. My Father picked me up to show me my new sister and brother. He bent me over their crib (i.e. turned me upside down) then held me upright. When he did that, according to the 'rents, I threw up all over my Father! LOL! To this day this is an in joke between my younger sister and brother and me…we’ll be standing around and I’ll start to make throw up noises and we’ll all laugh our butts off. I mean even now that we are 45 and 47 years old. [/hijack]

Just thought I’d share.

43

I was almost three. We were in Boston, staying in a hotel. There was a balcony, on which I stood and watched the streetcars pass by far below. They were reddish-orange, and I was annoyed that they came so infrequently.

Something else which might have been earlier or might never have happened at all: I was in the car, riding down city streets full of very old buildings. It was Washington, DC, and the radio was playing “Young Girl” by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. This could have been a tourist trip downtown the year after we moved to the DC area in 1968; if true, my last excursion into the city until school field trips starting in the mid-'70s.

44

Excuse my zombie thread, i searched and found it interesting. My first memory was when i was 3 years old, maybe xmas or my birthday. I got a wooden railroad (Brio?) with those magnetic trains to go. It was a present from either my grandmother or my old aunt. I remember where everyone sat in our livingroom, but then my memories fail me. Fades away after that. Wish i remembered more.

I also remember a trip to sweden, withe same grandmother and grandpa and family, to a nice summer cabin at their friends. Friends had LOTS of toys :slight_smile: :slight_smile: so me and my brother were in warm weather and in heaven!

45

There’s been some work on childhood memories. A Yale study that suggests that very early childhood memories are there, but just can’t be recalled.

Going back a bit (but well after the OP), there’s been studies such as this one that suggests that 2.5 years is a common age for first (recallable) memory. It was generally claimed the 3 or even 4 was the limit on how far back ones memories go.

The 2.5 yo point is interesting from my point of view since my earliest datable memory is at the age of 2 years, 2 months and 12 days.

46

Summer 1960, in Oklahoma; I was 2.

<my memory>
I was riding on Daddy’s shoulders. We went through the door of the house, into the yard; it was dark, with rain and lightning. We ran a short distance, then down some steps into a space below ground. A light was about level with my face. Grandpa was there; he was also about level with me on Daddy’s shoulders.
</my memory>

Over the years, my mother filled in the details around my memory of that night. Briefly: Grandpa was monitoring the thunderstorm, noticed signs that a tornado was about to strike, and ordered everybody into the storm cellar. Daddy got me out; Mommy collected my baby sister and was getting her out, just as all the windows on one side of the house blew out. Scary, but nobody was hurt, and the windows were the only real damage,

So, I have a vivid memory of a real event, corroborated by Mommy’s account of the same event. Yeah!

47

A cemetery in Taipei. I was maybe 4. I was walking ahead of my parents as fast as I could. They kept calling me to slow down but I wouldn’t.

48

I have several distinct memories, from the house where my family lived until just before my third birthday:

  • Following my father into the kitchen, because he was going to make a milkshake for me.
  • Lying in my bed (I think I was not in a crib by that point) at night, looking out the bedroom window
  • Seeing a news program on TV (I think it was the Huntley-Brinkley Report, the NBC network newscast of that time)
  • Playing with a green Nylint truck, under the Christmas tree

I’ve described those memories to my parents, and what the layout was of the house, and they agree that they seem plausible to them.

49

For some weird reason I remember sitting up in bed, when I was less than 3 years old.

I distinctly remember my 3rd birthday. It was at a Bill Knapp’s restaurant located a few miles south of Dayton, Ohio. I remember the server bringing me a cupcake with a number “3” candle on it, like this.

50

My earliest is very vague - I remember a face looking down at me. It was very blurry, but I knew it was my Mom. Felt nice. No idea how old.
First clear memory is when I was 2, I know because we lived in that particular house only 6 months. I was sitting on a black and white tiled floor, and I realized in a very OMG! kind of way, that the tiles made patterns that repeated in multiple different ways. This blew my tiny little mind. Symmetry and repetition … Memory is wordless, just ‘!!’

51

I was dreaming something (don’t remember) and that dream woke me up. It wasn’t a nightmare. I was in a crib, mom and dad were sleeping. The room was rather dark with big curtains, but it was daytime. A morning or an afternoon nap, I don’t know.
I managed to get out of the crib - through the bars, over the bars, I don’t know. I bumped on the floor but I didn’t hurt myself. I crawled to the next room, then to the next where my grandma was sleeping. I approached her, she opened her eyes, not surprised at all, she just smiled, lifted me and put me next to her in bed. Some time later (minutes? hour? Did I fell asleep again?) my mum stormed the room in panic, looking for me.

The first thing in that sequence is a dream that woke me up, even if I don’t remember the dream itself. It’s a memory of a memory. Perhaps my brain fabricated some of that, but mum confirmed that I indeed escaped the crib that one time.

52

Some of my earliest memories are vague enough that I can’t be sure whether I’m actually remembering something or remembering being told about it by my mother at a later age.

I can remember clearly that I wasn’t allowed to ride on Freckles, our dog, and I really couldn’t see the harm because Freckles was huge !

That makes it a memory from a time when I was quite little, since that “huge” dog was a cocker spaniel.

53

My memories stretch very far back, at least to when I was two. My potentially earliest memory is a very vague, simplistic cartoon of a picture in my head about something that happened when I could have been hardly more than one and a half years old. My mother and I are on the balcony of the house where my family lived for a few months before my parents bought an apartment and we are watching a man called Jack mow the lawn. I know this man existed (once, when I was 3 or 4, I think we even ran into him at the mall). However, I now strongly suspect that this is not a direct memory, but a slightly later dream or mental image based either on my memory or on my parents telling me about Jack mowing the lawn when I was about three. I am not sure if I could have understood the concept of someone cutting the grass at one and a half.

My first real memories are definitely things that happened when I would have been two to two and a half years old. My long-term memory started developing very early, around the time of my toilet training. A fairly clear memory is of lying on my parents’ bed in the morning. There was an orange blanket instead of a window curtain, and I was telling my mother that my diaper was not comfortable. My mother says this happened when I was two and a half and that she told me I could stop using diapers if I learned to use the toilet. I also remember my potty, other toilet training equipment, and my parents reading me a book about going to the toilet. Other memories that have stayed with me from about this time or even somewhat earlier include a vague recollection of my high chair and of my bib - which had a rabbit similar to Bugs Bunny on it, or of some rather banal moments when I was with my parents at home.

I remember lots of things starting when I was three - by that time, my long-term memory had fully formed. I am amazed when I hear people say they remember almost nothing from before school age.

54

The earliest is probably when I ran away from nursery school, so probably age four (?). I hated the person running the place because she made me eat a piece of fat from a can of soup. It made me vomit, and then she punished me for barfing. So we were all standing outside on the street corner (we were forbidden to leave the grounds), daring each other to step off the curb, when I said “Well, I’m leaving.” And I did.

Now, this was Juneau, AK which was a very small town in the early 1950s, so the odds of someone spotting you and calling your mom were pretty good. As it happened, I made my way home somehow and walked in and was met with a gale-force blast from my mother. I can’t remember how it all panned out in the end.

55

One of my earliest memories is like a movie in my head: Staring up at a grainy black-and-white television image, there’s something bobbing in the water, there’s a helicopter, and a man is talking excitedly.

I now know this was my parent’s old Panasonic television and it was the Apollo 13 splashdown, so I must have been about three-and-a-half or so.

56

A light at the end of a tunnel and being told to go to the light. So probably the same as my last memory will be.

My earliest distinct memory is my dad cooking eggs and it flamed up (grease fire?) and catching the window curtain of fire, one of those early 70’s gauzy curtains that went up like flash paper. My dad yells at my sister and me to get out of the house. We rush out and we’re running down the sidewalk to a neighbor we knew. I was 3 or 4 and my sister is 3 years older so she left me in the dust.

My dad did almost die in a house fire at that point in my life, but my mom (who wasn’t home at the time) said it didn’t happen the way I remember.

57

My older brother scared me once by wearing a devil mask. I was on the staircase and fell down some steps. I am not certain how old I was when this happened but he left for the Marine Corps when I was about two years old.

One that is perfectly clear: I almost drowned just after I turned three. We were at a lake for a picnic and my two older sisters were supposed to be keeping an eye on my. They were actually on a floating platform a ways off shore flirting with some boys and I thought I would walk out to where they were. I remember very clearly sinking in the dark water and looking up to see the light from the sun. One of the boys my sisters were flirting with saw me go down and came to get me. This is all as clear to me as if it were yesterday

58

I was 3 years old, so 1952 or '53. I got tonsillitis, and what I remember is the doctor in the hospital who tricked me into inhaling ether. He put the thing on his face and faked inhaling, then he handed it to me, and I went to sleep, resenting the ruse.

59

I remember sitting in Santa’s lap and a little research confirms I was 20 months old at the time. Just a brief vision of all that beard and the glasses.

60

The first thing I remember I was lying in my bed. I couldn’t have been no more than one or two. I remember there was a radio coming from the room next door, and my mother laughed the way some ladies do. I’m not sure what time of day it was though.