What's Your Earliest Memory?

[arwalden]

[Champ]

1. I can't remember

:D

[Eye and Monkey]

15. I think I had an early Mac with maybe 1000k memory.

But, like you, I'm unclear remembering that far back.

[Droopy]

2. Putting my hand on a stove burner while it was hot

I was about two. I remember my mom putting some kind of cream on it and pain like you wouldn't believe.

[UnAmericanJoe]

24. This is mine as well

Except I remember taking a hasty ride to a Navy hospital afterwards. I'm told that the skin on my hand was almost melted off.

It's been downhill from there.

[Fridays Child]

3. A train trip from Kansas City to Los Angeles.

I was 2½ years old.

What was yours, Allen?

[Deja Q]

4. Vomiting...

Day care. In a trailer home. I recall a huge picture of Jesus, but that wasn't why I vomited. I recall mom picking me up. Mid-70s silver/grey Chrysler Horizon car. (I checked, the earliest hatchback model was 1977. So I was at least 4 at the time...)

Mom told me of earlier events (IQ testing and other such stuff) but I don't recall those.

I miss the past. It's the same now as it was then except I had a loving family close by. Everyone is distant these days...

[blackcat77]

5. Being at a circus

There were loud noises and scary clowns and I didn't like it one bit.

[supernova]

6. A Bicycle

oddly enough.

My grandmother's driveway connected with ours. We were walking home from her house to our house. I was riding my tricycle.

As I made the turn from grandma's road to our road, the entire handlebars came off! I was about three I think.

I remember thinking Wow! That's so wierd!

[Burger King]

7. telling my mom I wanted it my way

[Lisa0825]

10. Hi, BK! Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[Lisa0825]

8. I was around 2 or 2 1/2.... a friend of the family , Bob,

a big guy with a scruffy beard, liked to pick me up and toss me into the air, and "threaten" that he was gonna give me a big kiss (because his beard would tickle my face and I would scream and giggle). I can still remember it sooo clearly... a really fun, innocent, joyful memory.

Several years ago, I posted this very topic on another board. My mom was still alive then. I was talking to her about some of my early memories, and trying to figure out what year they were from. she was amazed at my memory of Bob, becase she said I couldn't be much over 2 years old then. I also remember his son. He had somewhat pointy teeth (I don't remember the name for them, but the vamrpire ones), and he used to chase me around yelling, "I vant to suck your blooooooood!" LOL

[ThoughtCriminal]

9. Licking a screen door

about 2-years old. Still remember the taste and texture.

[EstimatedProphet]

11. I do have one very early memory

I was about 2, and throwing a tantrum for this stuff called "Shake-a-pud" (yes, that was it's ACTUAL name), an instant pudding that came in a fun kid-oriented container. I saw an ad for it on TV and had to have it. Of course, it was horrible pudding.

[Ksec]

12. Waking up in my bed and realizing I couldnt move my head

or sit up. I had went to sleep with bubble gum ,I guess, and when I woke up I had my hair gummed to the bed. I must've been 4 or 5. My Mother had to cut all my hair off to get me loose. Thats my first memory.

[kdmorris]

13. A vaccination

But I probably only remember it because my mother "lied" to me. She said we were just going to take Kim to school and there was ice cream involved. I remember a brick building and the shot. I remember being really mad at her. I asked her about it later and she said it was probably my MMR. In retrospect, she probably had to lie to me. I have later memories of screaming my brains out getting cholera vaccinations in Italy. I was not a happy vaccinatee.

We took my older sister to school and my little brother was in a stroller. I remember my mom being "fat", so it was probably sometime in the late spring of 1972, as she was pregnant with my little sister then. So I would have just turned 3.

It's more like a slide show, rather than a movie though. Just a few disjointed images.

[petronius]

14. Walking around the house saying "I'm three!"...

... "I am three!" ... "I'm three!" over and over and over again. I dont recall how old I was when this happened, though. ;-)

Another that may have been earlier was telling my Mom I was going to throw a ball through a window, and then doing it. Subsequent events made this occasion particularly memorable! :spank: (Although I did get to go to the glass cutting store, which was cool...)

[BiggJawn]

16. Well, it was quiet and warm...

Then something started squeezing me REAL hard! and then it was noisy and cold, and somebody grabbed me by the ankles and hung me up...

Gotta stop gettin' drunk in those SM clubs....

[SheilaT]

17. Two memories from before

I turned two:

First one I was standing at the top of the very steep stairs in the place we lived in, thinking to myself, I'm a big girl now, I can walk down the steps. Taking about two steps and falling. I knocked out a tooth.

A month or so later I climbed out of my crib (apparently deciding I was too old to nap) and chipped a bone in my elbow. I don't recall climbing out of the crib, but I have several memories connected to the broken bone -- visiting the doctor, and my older sister trying to get me to give her the sling to wear.

Interestingly enough, several years ago at a family get-together, I talked about sister trying to persuade me to let her have the sling, and she could recall it quite clearly. And in fifty years we'd NEVER spoken to each other about it. The other brother and sister present were quite impressed at what we'd remembered -- this was before they were born.

I have a lot of memories from before I turned three, although they're pretty fragmentary.

My oldest son seems to have a memory that would date from when he was just a few months old, if it's accurate.

[SnohoDem]

18. A black man

lifting me on his shoulders in the house he was helping (without charge) my father build. I am white. I could never stomach racism.

[dweller]

19. i was two, going on free

peeking in the window in the basement at the party being set up, my mom and older sister were putting a cake in the shape of a train with chocolate icing on a table. It was made of pound cakes, iced and trimmed with candy and other sweets to make up the wheels and windows, etc.
I was hanging (as you did when you were 2 going on free), with a neighborhood kid, looking in the window and wondering what was the big deal...and how to get at the cake.

later there was a party. I think someone cried. It may have been me. Or one of my brothers.

fuzzy,
dp

[Kool Kitty]

20. A couple of them, jumbled up.

I have a vague memory of my mother bathing me in a bassinette (forerunner of the little plastic baby bathtubs), so I would guess that I was younger than two years old. I also remember standing in my playpen, in the living room while my mother was watching "The Loretta Young Show". I was about two-and-a-half or three. Another is my mother feeding me in my high chair. I was eating something orange (I'm assuming carrots) and I broke my mother's necklace by grabbing it off her neck and the beads fell in my dish (the beads were green). I guess I was about two.

[shanti]

21. standing on my bed

looking out the window, and bawling my head off. i was punished for something...i was about 3 years old and had just gotten a spanking.

[ClassWarrior]

22. Several...

The early ones... going to a ceramics show with my folks, and begging my mom for the set of 4 Beatles ceramic figures (this was the early 60's). I got a little ceramic dog, which I still have. Having become a Beatles collector, I'd really rather have the Beatles set. I also remember being in a playpen at the hotel near my grandmother's nursing home, watching "The Real McCoys" TV show.

My first couple of dated memories are watching Lyndon Johnson announce on TV that he wouldn't seek an additional term (1967), as well as standing in my driveway wondering what "1967" means. I would have been six.

[Speck Tater]

23. Crystal clear memories from 58 years ago.

The first one, I remember like it was yesterday. I was no more than 18 months old, lying in the crib studying my hands and thinking "How strange it is to be small again."

The second one is also clear, but really strange. I remember my mother holding me in her arms in the car and complaining to my father that she could smell exhaust fumes and that she was worried the smell might make the baby (me) sick. What makes it strange is that when I mentioned this memory to my mother a few years ago she got a really perplexed look on her face. She remembered the incident also, but it happened when they were taking me home from the hospital. I was 3 days old. Tell me how I understood and remembered what was said since I hadn't yet learned to talk.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

37. A theory

You were told the car story when you were very young (maybe 2 or 3) and it was incorporated into your still not properly functioning brain as a memory.

The first one: you dreamed of being big.

At this point, people who believe in reincarnation are mad at me for being a big grouchy skeptical Scrooge. Well I say "Bah humbug!" ;)

[leftofthedial]

25. probably about 5:15 AM

or thereabouts.

[Forkboy]

26. My dad going nuts when the Bruins won the Stanley Cup in '70

I was three and I remember him jumping up all excited and yelling and happy.

[Awsi Dooger]

27. Being speechless when a neighbor asked about my mom's pregnancy

I was slightly more than 3 and my mother was in the hospital, pregnant with my sister. My dad was barbequing in the back yard and I was standing there with a spatula, alongside our house near the fence.

A woman who lived on the other side of the block was walking along the sidewalk in front of our house. She saw me and asked about my mother. For some reason I was absolutely numb. I can still picture the woman, frozen for all time on that sidewalk waiting for a response from me. Finally she smiled and asked if my dad was there. I ran to get him and he bailed me out with the news of my mother.

[Roon]

28. Being in a crib.

and watching our black cat standing on the nightstand and being afraid of it. Have no idea how old I was.

I also remember wearing a bib and eating oatmeal in a high chair.

[MichaelUK]

29. My mum and dad having an argument

My dad threatened to leave home and picked me and my sister up under each arm and started to walk out of the door.

[mopaul]

30. the boy's ward at shriner's hospital

in st. louis. i remember being in a room full of crippled kids like myself, about 50 of us, surrounded by nurses. we were all learning to brush our teeth, and i hated it. i remember thinking 'what the hell am i doing here? i should be home'

and for some reason i remember a nun. i was not catholic, but a nun was speaking to me in a most beautiful voice and so calming and re-assuring. i still don't remember what she was saying, but i remember thinking that i loved her.

[terrya]

31. Reaching for a glass, the glass falls to the floor and shatters, and I...

fall off the chair onto the broken glass. I was taken to the hospital after. The scars on my back from that accident are still there.

[Dogmudgeon]

32. Hard to say

I have a number of sensory memories from way early in my life -- infancy and all that -- that are supposedly only recoverable by fairly intensive methods, the validity of which haven't even been established. These memories involve laying in my crib or my "bassinette", feeling the the shape of the bottle as I was feeding and the feel of the glass, looking out the open window (I was born in May), and several memories of being in a hospital isolette that would have had to have happened when I was three weeks old. Other memories involve me being frustrated that I couldn't walk and had to crawl around; not being able to reach the telephone; and being carried down the stairs.

Any of these memories could be confabulations, but a lot of research is tending toward recognizing early memories as "real". I neither put much scientific stock in them, nor do I dismiss them, but they are interesting.

--bkl

[nuxvomica]

33. A pink plastic teacup covered with dirt

I was three and some bigger kids had a can of gasoline and claimed to be drinking it. They wouldn't let me try it unless I had something to drink it in. Serendipitously, I discovered an old toy teacup half buried in the back yard. I cleaned it off as best I could and got my swig of gasoline.
I can still picture the pattern embossed on the surface of the teacup. I don't remember what followed by I've heard the story a million times

[trof]

34. Stepping on a broken milk bottle at age 3(?)

Yep, milk came in glass bottles back then.
Delivered to your front door, no less.
It was on the sidewalk in front of our apartment building.
I don't remember immediate pain, just felt like I'd stepped on a rock.

Then I looked back to see what I'd stepped on and there were these two bloody footprints leading to....ME! My first stitches.

[Gildor Inglorion]

35. Looking for fairies under toadstools with my father

after a rainstorm. According to my sister, who's ten years older, I was about one and-a-half when we moved from that place, so that's about how old I was at the time. I have other memories from living there, but this is the oldest one.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

36. Face up, in the crib, at night, looking at the lights from the cars

whizzing by the ceiling, and slightly creeped out by then. We lived in a 2nd-floor apartment building in a busy street. I was probably 2, nearing 3.

[fudge stripe cookays]

38. When I was 4 and we lived in Virginia, but I don't know which came first

* Getting into my mom's Rose Mint face cream and smearing it all over my bed and myself. Ain't I a stinkah?

* Going to Blue Bird Gap Farm, Williamsburg, Jamestown, or the Ice Capades (Disney on Parade)

* My dad coming home from the Philippines after being gone for a year and a half and me hanging on his leg. He couldn't go anywhere without me! Unfortunately, one day, he had a cigarette in his hand and I was right underneath it! I remember the searing pain in my eye, and having to drive out to the emergency room at the base while I was screaming my head off!

FSC

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. Climbing onto the dining room sideboard

because I wanted to see out the high windows behind it. My mother grabbed me off before I could break any of the inherited china that was standing there. She also remembers the incident and thinks that I was about two.

My mother is listening to the radio, stops short, and then calls to my father, who is in another room, to tell him that Stalin has died. She then runs to the phone to call my grandparents and tell them (my grandfather was Latvian). I've checked the date of Stalin's death, and it was three months before my third birthday.

My great-uncle has been a chaplain with the occupation forces in Germany. He comes home before being reassigned to Korea, bringing a cuckoo clock for my parents. The cuckoo clock is lying on its back on the couch, and I am fascinated by it. I was two or three.

The first of my brothers is born, but I can't go see my mother in the hospital. One of her friends watches me in the hospital lobby while my father and grandparents go upstairs to see the new baby. I was three.

That winter, we took a trip to Arkansas because my grandparents wanted to try the thermal baths at Hot Springs. I remember a lot of details from that trip, including going to the baths, where the attendant gave me a toy sailboat to play with in the tub; going on a picnic where we ate egg salad sandwiches, staying in a trailer park next door to a farm where they raised chickens, visiting some friends of my grandparents who had retired to the Ozarks and driving on mountain roads in their yellow station wagon, and stopping by the side of the road to see some teenagers get baptized in a river. I was three-and-a-half.

[camero]

40. 4 years old

Watching a sunset in Long Beach, CA at a playground. It was the first time I saw one of those circular slides too.

[HEyHEY]

41. Crying and my mother coming to comfort me

[achtung_circus]

42. I don't know how old I was

I was lying in my crib, there was noise in the background, music I guess, in retrospect. I heard high heels on the hardwood floor. My mommy came into the room and gave me a bottle and it was apple juice.

That's all, folks.

[Tom_Foolery]

43. Which life?

Just kidding. I remember crawling through the house when I was just a baby. In fact, I dream about it quite often.

[St. Jarvitude]

44. Being set on top of a recycling bin

I kid you not... I remember that when I was about one or two, and was still in a car seat, my mom carried me out of the car while still in it and set me down on the (rather stable) recycling bin in the kitchen.

I know it's a bizarre one, but ... :shrug:

[bloodyjack]

45. inserting car keys in an electrical outlet—d'oh!

i was 1 1/2, young and foolish