I recall playing on some swings and playing “king of the castle” on a hay mound. I would have been less than 3. I know this because I moved to a different country at 3.
I always thought I could remember taking a plane trip when I was very little - not quite a year old - but my parents always told me that was impossible. Recently, though, I described to my older sister what I remembered, and she confirmed that it was accurate: we were sitting in a section where pairs of seats faced each other, like on a train. I was sitting on the floor in the middle and playing. On the wall next to me, there was a magazine rack, and there was a Dr. Seuss book in it, and my mom read it to us. According to my parents, I also threw up several times during the flight, which I’ve mercifully forgotten. We moved when I was 4, and I have a bunch of memories from those first years, but this is by far the earliest I can put a definitive date on. And Anaamika, it’s not like I remember that time like I remember, say, my college years. It’s mostly just tiny bits and pieces of images and emotions.
I helped put the topper on the Christmas tree. I remember walking up the flight of stairs that the giant tree was place next to, the living room was open above to the second story. I was 2 years 3 months.
We moved into a new house the following spring. My next memory was my mother vacuuming while my older brother and I played with the chess/chinese checkers set the previous owners left behind. Yup, I learned to play chess when I was two.
Getting a smallpox shot when I was a little over one years old. I still see the huge needle coming at me.
I have 2 early memories but I can’t be sure which one was first.
When I was 2 years and 2 months old my baby sister was born. I remember my parents bringing her home from the hospital and sitting her in my lap while I sat on the couch.
I also remember a moment when I was in my crib and I woke up in the night a stood up. I could see a mesh bag of blocks hanging from the door handle of the closet, but in the darkness and my half-waking state I saw it as an animal head and I was very frightened.
I lived in a small company-owned sawmill town in Oregon in the late 50’s and moved out when I was 5. A company town meant that the company that owned the sawmill also owned all of the houses the workers lived in. The whistle blew in the morning when the day shift started, blew again at noon and the workers either went home for lunch if married, or if single went to the dinning/dance hall to eat. And the whistle blew again at the end of the day and you knew dad was coming home.
I remember taking pop and beer bottles to the company store to cash in for 1 cent candies, watching tadpoles turning into frogs under the wooden side walks. Lots of other things.
I have many memories but I couldn’t tell you which was the earliest. I had a book about this town, but I loaned it to a co-worker a few years ago and then she got fired the next day. Never got the book back, now out of print, but I am still looking.
My third birthday. I remember a cake and candles and my family singing the birthday song at the dining room table. I remember my father taking a marker and writing my name and a big “3” on a sippy cup; I probably remember this because I used “my” cup every day after at that age. I also remember kids in the neiborhood saying to their name and age, with minor disagreements over whether “three” was pronounced “free” or not. This would have been 1965.
Ì have many memories from before I could talk. The earliest has to be being placed in a crib for my nap and not wanting to go to sleep. I can remember looking through the wooden slats at the nursery walls (they were painted beige) and seeing the sun shine outside, even though the window shades were pulled down. I not only remember the visual setting, I remember how I felt (very uneasy) and thinking that I would remember this for a long time to come.
I also remember sitting in my high chair, looking at the Gerber baby on a box of cereal, and thinking it was me. I got very excited and tried to tell my mother that they’d put my picture on the box, but of course she couldn’t understand me and just kept nodding and saying “Uh-huh, that’s a baby!” It was unbelievably frustrating! Many years later, I saw she had written “Oohs and ahhs at the Gerber baby!” in my baby book.
I thought conventional wisdom had it that it is rare for people to remember anything before the age of three. Surprised how many here claim to have these memories.
We moved to the DC area from Los Angeles when I was four and a half, which gives me a line of demarcation. The last winter we were there, when I would have still been three, it snowed - which meant that there were flakes in the sky that melted instantly when they hit the ground. Dad made sure my sister and I saw the snow. Funny that that was the last winter in our lives when snow would be a big deal.
I have other memories that I’m sure are from when I was three (or possibly earlier) - climbing over a baby gate across the stairs going from the second floor to the roof, and being unable to climb back, and squalling until my mother and some other women who were there came running up the stairs from the ground floor, stuff like that. I also have a memory of getting a real bed at last - no more crib.
For me, it’s about like Heart of Dorkness said- random disjoint memories of the first house I lived in, which we moved out of when I was four.
So I know when all of these had to be- but there aren’t many I can pin down more specifically than that. The fact I was bumped by Christmas tree tells me when that one was, or I wouldn’t really know.
The next summer I was outside playing with a toy xylophone, though. Had to be that year, I was still not really talking much but I was bigger. 2 1/2 or so.
I remember running around the back yard before our next door neighbors put in a fence. I also have one memory of me in a crib. That narrows it down to about a three-month period when I was two.
But I don’t have any really coherent memories from any earlier than about age four.
I remember moving into our house from our apartment. My sister was not born, but my mom was pregnant. It was a nice day. I must have been about 2½ because my sister was born in January just few days before my 3rd birthday.
The earliest memory I am certain is real was when I was four. We were at Stone Mountain with my aunt’s family. Everybody was going to go up the mountain but I wasn’t allowed, being too young, so I cried as I watched them walk away. Dad said we’d ride the train instead. That was fine until the Indians attacked! I cried like a fiend again. Got a slide whistle from the gift shop later.
Sitting inside of my cousin’s red hook and ladder truck when I was 4ish. I was wearing a military style kid helmet and holding a toy gun. I remember him trying to get me out so he could play with his pals, but I wasn’t budging. I was a stubborn little shit 
I don’t know how old I was, could have been 5, could have been 8, but I was resting against my mother’s chest and as she was talking I remember hearing it from the ear resting against her chest. RIP Mom. 
We were driving to Canada in my dad’s 60’s era Cadillac. My parents had put a mattress in the back seat for me to play on (this was before we all became more enlightened and started using fancy gizmos like car seats). I recall looking up, and becoming utterly mesmerized by the big orange tiger I saw in the late afternoon clouds. Yes that word popped into my mind at that precise moment.
A number of years later I was able to confirm the details with my mother-we had taken a trip to Canada via old route 2 along Lakes Erie and Ontario, where they did that mattress thing as described. It was in May, when the sun would have been setting in the northwest at the right angle to be seen by me.
I was ten months old. They must have read a book to me about tigers, and I picked up said word very quickly (I was speaking by 7 months).
I’m not sure how old I was, and it wasn’t witnessed, but I remember my brother, 11 months older than I, taking my bottle from me and drinking it, and I was in a crib. So young enough to still be drinking from a bottle and sleeping in a crib, apparently. Sorry, Anaamika, I guess that makes me… whatever?.. but that’s my earliest memory. To be fair, my parents were kind of shitty, so I may have been 2 or 3 at the time.
Wow. My parents traded in their green Plymouth Belvidere for a blue Olds.
My first memory is also very clear in detail. I remember both JFK being reported as DOA via Walter Cronkite, then watching Oswald get shot. I can remember what my parents were wearing, the layout of the house. 4 yrs old, but I knew it was for real, unlike Dragnet or Car54.
Seeing my mom crying, then her telling dad when he walked in the door. Can recall the salt n pepper full length coat he wore, and moms dress.
My grandfather had died, but I didn’t grasp that young people died as well, or that people killed other people.
I probably had previous memories, but that week erased them.
I have to wonder how it’s possible to remember the thoughts you had before you could speak, but I surely do.
I remember laying awake late at night when I was around 1 year old, waiting for my dad to come home from work. I could always hear the car pulling up to park on the gravel driveway beneath my window and seeing the light from the headlamps sweep across the walls and ceiling. I believe I was sleeping then in a playpen rather than a crib, because I would stand up on my chubby little legs and start chanting “Da-a-dee, Da-a-dee, Da-a-dee!” until the door opened and he was standing there silhouetted against the hall light.
I also remember him taking a picture of me in the bathtub with my mom one evening about the same time, as later photographic evidence would show. I can see him standing back against the wall and radiator (both painted green) with a big bellows camera (he was working as a photographer at that time) while my mom climbs into the tub wearing nothing but a pink shower cap. I know it was night because the frosted window is all black outside. I was sitting in the front of the tub up to my neck in warm water and having the time of my life!