What's your earliest memory? How old were you?

[Bossy Monkey]

If you'd like a syntax challenge, try making the subject line above into one sentence. ("How old were you when you formed the earliest memory you can still recall?" I eventually just said "Heck with it.")

The earliest memory I can recall for sure is when we moved from Charleston to Columbia when I was a week and change past my 3d birthday. There are photos of a peanut-headed individual answering my description apparently taken just before the move, but I have no recollection of them. I also have vague recollections of playing on a bricked floor at our house in Charleston as a baby, but nothing definite. My mother confirmed the existence of the brick floor, however.

How 'bout you?

[TrogL]

1. Asking for hot chocolate

I was about two feet tall.

[quispquake]

2. When I was three...

...I remember riding on the subway to the Ringling Bros. Circus & bits & pieces of the circus itself...first memory in my addled brain...

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. I remember my 3rd birthday

And I distinctly remember it EVEN THEN thinking really hard as to why I couldn't remember anything. I was ultra confused as to what the hell was going on, even questioning who my parents were and such. For the second time today I'll say it - I never claimed to be normal.

[trotsky]

4. Nearly choking on a LifeSaver, age 3.

Not the most pleasant of memories!

[AlienGirl]

5. When my mother went to the hospital

My mom was in the hospital for food poisoning, and I was staying at my grandmother's house. I didn't want to eat anything but sweetened milk and the raisins out of toasted raisin bread. I was 14 months old, and it was when I was weaned (unexpectedly).

Tucker

[mitchtv]

6. climbing out of my crib

and sleeping on the cedar chest next to the window.Probably old enough to not need a crib, but big family, small apartment.

[Gildor Inglorion]

7. Looking for fairies under toadstools with my father

after a heavy rain. I was about one and a half years old. I'm much older now *ahem* but I still look under toadstools when I find them, just to see... I had really cool parents.

[baby_bear]

8. I was three

My family had just moved to California from Oregon. My first memory was of my parents fighting in the dining area, and specifically, my father throwing a suitcase at my mother. I even remember exactly what the suitcase looked like. I was either very close by, or perhaps between them. Never forgot it.

s_m

P.S. She wasn't hurt (physically).

[flamingyouth]

9. Being afraid of a white van across the street

I was in my stroller and my mom wanted to take me for a walk around the cul-de-sac we lived on, but I was terrified of the van and kept screaming, so we never went out. I would imagine I was about 20 months or so. I was apparently really annoying to have in a stroller - I hated them.

[AlienGirl]

14. Do you remember why the van frightened you?

[flamingyouth]

24. No, but I was an easily frightened child

Hell, I'm an easily frightened adult too! :D

[demnan]

10. Riding in a car in my mother's lap

my father was driving and I remember arriving at Rehoabeth Beach, Delware. There was a huge thing that must have been a sign. I was 18 months old.

That was before seat belts and car seats, by the way.

[robertpaulsen]

11. I was probably two years old

I remember I used to watch Sesame Street every morning. I know I was two because at three we moved to different house. My earliest memory is finding a soulmate in the Cookie Monster.

[rbnyc]

12. I wasn't born yet.

I've told this story before, but my earliest memory, which I'd thought was something that happened when I was 3 or 4, turned out to be something that happened when my mom was about7 months pregnant.

I remember being at a party with my parents and some friends of the family, and my Aunt Judy. Aunt Judy needed to go to the liqueur store and I went with her. I remember the color of the sky just before sunset. I remember the smell of the breeze. I remember the route we took. I remember walking up and down the aisles and how bright it was in the store and watching Aunt Judy pay the cashier. I remember Aunt Judy clutching the bag of bottles to her chest as she walked up a set of concrete steps in the apartment complex courtyard. She fell and the bottles broke, cutting her badly. I remember seeing the pool of blood growing from underneath her and being so scared. I looked up to the window of our friend's apartment where the party was and thought, "Mom!" Then my mom looked out the window and saw what had happened and called 911.

When I was a teenager I asked my mom what she remembered about that day, and that's when I found out that I was not 3 or 4 years old and I had not walked with my aunt to the liqueur store. My mom was pregnant with me when that happened. She said that she was at the party waiting for Aunt Judy to come back, and she felt compelled to look out the window.

Strange.

[AlienGirl]

16. Whoa, cool!

:thumbsup:

[grannylib]

19. No doubt!

[rbnyc]

23. Thanks

I always had a special connection with my Aunt Judy. Sadly, she passed away when I was in college.

[CO Liberal]

13. Playing In The Yard With My Sister And Some Neighbor Kids

It was summer and I was 3 - that would put it somewhere in 1956.

[cally]

15. Camping and heading out to feel this terrific dirt

I can still remember the soft, warm, very fine, almost orange dirt. My Mom and Dad kept picking me up and moving me away and I remember my frustration. I vividly remember my Mom setting me down and telling me that this was nice dirt and feeling abslute frustration that I couldn't explain how much better the other dirt was.


Years later, I learned I was 1 years old. I kept crawling out to the camp road while camping in Yosemite Valley. My parents refused to camp for years because of my persistence trying to get the dirt. When I explained my memories of it, they sort of looked dumbfounded and agreed that the dirt I described was what I seemed to want at that time.

[grannylib]

17. I have a memory that stuns my mom, since I was only 8 months old at

the time and it's not the kind of event of which there are pix or that gets talked about a lot...
I remember standing in a crib holding onto the bars, and a babysitter who had been dispatched to Dairy Queen to get treats for all the kids at this nursery was waving a Dilly Bar at me and asking me if I wanted it.
I have many many clear and vivid memories of ages 1-3, which is pretty unusual I guess.

[TlalocW]

18. I was in my crib... I know that

Playing with a Superman doll whose S-emblem was a sticker. My head was facing towards the east window; crib was in the northwest corner. I was taking off the sticker and playing with it.

TlalocW

[SoCalDem]

20. Being thrown into the ocean...I was 3... it was in Key West

:scared:

That was my father's way of teaching me to swim. (the waves would bring me back before I drowned)..Nice, huh? :(

[Bossy Monkey]

36. My dad did it that way, too

As this was mainly in the ocean, and there's no ocean handy here, some of those memories might be pre-3-years-old, too. On the other hand, my mom's family had a beach house on Folly Beach until Hurricane Hugo, so some were definitely later.

All I can say is he meant well.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

21. Being in a playpen while my mother ironed

she was watching 'Days of Our Lives'. I was about 1 1/2.

Another one is my mother playing Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" on a little phonograph she used to have before they got the big console stereo. I was around 3.

I was an only child until my sisters arrived 4 and five years after me.

[Mr. McD]

22. I have vague memories of being at my fathers funeral

I was 4. I don't really think I knew what was going on.

[starroute]

25. About one and a half

I have very clear and specific memories from about the age of three on, so all the really fuzzy ones have to be earlier.

I have a photo of me climbing over a little path railing in the park when I was one and a half, and I remember it being taken and how proud I was of being tall enough to get my leg over the top. I have another photo from that same summer, of me at the zoo with my uncle and cousin, and I remember that, too, because it was my first time at the zoo.

I remember all the dolls I got from the time I was 3 (and the circumstances under which I got most of them), and I also have a memory of sitting on the living room floor and playing with some really strange old dolls -- like a stuffed Humpty Dumpty -- that I didn't even have any more by the time I was 3 or 4.

I remember riding in a baby stroller and looking up at the tall buildings. I can't have been as much as two. And I have memories of playing in the park at what must have been about the same age.

I remember the birth announcement coming for a cousin who was born when I was 2. And I remember visiting another cousin (who was killed in an accident when I was two years and a few months) and our mothers taking us to the store and buying us matching blue jeans with flannel linings and our trying them on at his house and admining ourselves in front of the mirror.

Memories are funny things. The particularly vivid ones are like brief tape loops, that you can pull out and play over without necessarily having any context for them. My father, whose mother died in the Spanish Flu epidemic when he was three, says he doesn't remember her at all, but he does clearly remember standing in the synagogue after she died, holding his younger brother's hand and feeling that he had to take care of him.

[GreenPartyVoter]

26. 2ish, maybe less, all I see is aquamarine water waving around me

My mom suspects this is a memory of a bad time in a pool as a toddler.

[Demonaut]

27. remember a dark tunnel with a light at the end, breathing was difficult...

[flaminbats]

28. I remember being fed in a high-chair against my will!!!

then throwing the food over whenever mommy walked away! Man that was fun...:evilgrin:


Another time, I was running down a long dark tunnel. I heard a train and saw a light speeding toward me at the other end, but the faster I tried to run..the closer the train got.

Then I woke up, I was in my crib and the nighttime train going through our town had woken me again! I think I was around three both times.

[RT Atlanta]

29. memory

First, UNDISCLOSED, that's cool you moved to Columbia - that's where I was born and lived my first 9 years (folks and extended family still live there).

Mine are of some wonderful images of one of my granddads and, probably a few months later, leaving the hospital after visiting that same granddad who was very ill (he died a few days later) - I was about 2 1/2 at the time of the last memory of him.

[VelmaD]

30. The summer right before I turned two

the Summer Olympics were on tv. I had a swimsuit that looked just like the ones the US swimmers and divers were wearing. Every time thy'd show them I'd run and grab that suit and beg someone to put it on me. Then after the race I'd get a little tupperware container and stand up on top of it like I was on the podium.

The scary part though was what happened during the diving. I was watching with my nanna. We had this blue area rug in the living room and I guess I thought it looked a little like water. I climber up on the couch and before nanna could stop me I dove off. Head first. Which explains a lot. :-) I cried. Nanna cried. I was fine eventually. No permanent dammage.

[Padraig18]

31. I remember going to Galway with my daddy when I was 3.

We were in the truck, and I have no idea WHY we were going, but I distinctly remember him laughing and singing and buying us both an ice cream somewhere along the way. I think it may stand out because it was a beautiful, bright-blue, sunny day, and those are rare in Ireland. :)

[Nikia]

32. Going on a train to Toronto, 2 years 6 months

That is the one that I can pinpoint. I had several young memories from before I was 3 and a half, when my parents divorced and we moved, but they ard not in sequential order in my mind. I even remember the lay out of our house which children that age aren't suppose to be able to form in their heads.

[slinkerwink]

33. I have a lot of memories from one to three years old

The first memory I can remember is crawling out of my crib late at night and falling onto the floor. The other memories are vague, like slightly blurred snapshots. I remember being in a high chair in the kitchen, and the high chair was facing the refrigerator. The blond babysitter reached in and took out a jar of cinnamon applesauce. I was ecstatic because I loved cinnamon applesauce. (such a goddamn glutton back then). I thought that this memory wasn't real so I asked my mom about it and she was really surprised at how early I could remember these things. I also remember a fire at my parents' house--it was a small fire though--and being carried out in my father's arms through the smoke.

I also remember when I was three, coming out of the school hallway and seeing my mom and older brother there. I was very happy to see them. I also remember wearing a yellow ballerina tutu, and I had snatched a rainbow curly wig off my older brother's head at the halloween party. I put it on my head and walked around in jubilant glee. I still have that photo of me somewhere at my mother's house. It's such a classic photo.

Here's a couple of baby photos of me:

[Supply Side Jesus]

34. at least 9 months old

walking into my sister's and brothers play room. I remeber the barbie play house, and other toys scattered around the room. It was shortly after we moved in to that house that my dad took the play room and furnished it into a master bedroom. I have several memories before I was a year old.

[elfin]

35. We moved from Buffalo when I was 3

I have many memories of the Buffalo house, including floor plan. Can remember turning my head away from spoonfuls of food being thrust at me in the highchair, being bundled up to go outside to the snow and being terrified at the seeming mountains and screaming to go back in, standing in my crib and wondering how to get out, sitting in the living room in the one remaining chair on moving day and "singing", noticing the differences between sounds in a full house versus and empty one.

The food one is probably the earliest - I remember my mom and her friend laughing at my avoidance.

However, now it seems I cannot remember what I did yesterday without looking at my calendar.

[populistmom]

37. don't like to talk about it

:( I have a horrible memory of a babysitter who hurt my little brother. I was just under 3.

[NoPasaran]

38. Crying

I was left at a neighbor's house when my mother went to the hospital to have my brother and was unhappy about the situation. I was two.

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

39. It was 1965, and I was 3

And we were at my uncle's ranch in Oklahoma. I remember riding a horse as he walked along holding the bridle. I also remember being chased by a dog. I was afraid of dogs for YEARS afterward.

[Solomon]

40. I believe my first memory was looking out the window and seeing my

father drive up and bring my just born sister home. So I had to be 3 years 11 months, almost 4.

[Bossy Monkey]

41. Ok latenighters/westcoasters, what's your story? (kick) n/t

[pfitz59]

42. Black widow spiders in the play-house when I was 2.

Scary basement and steep stairs. (Same age.) Running away in the rain with my older brother and little sister, laughing, while my (very) pregnant mom chased after us cursing "Get back here! I'm gonna kill you!" Getting locked in a refrigerator and almost dying (3). (I remember screaming 'Let me out!' and hearing same brother and sister laughing.)

[Spirochete]

43. When I was 2

I can remember my father getting down on his hands and knees, growling like a bear, and chasing me around the living room. I also remember him giving me a sip of his beer. it tasted wonderful. My second sip was about 8 years later, and was a real letdown from what I remembered from the first one.

[chicagojoe]

44. JFK ASSASSINATION

I WAS 3-1/2 YRS. OLD AT THE TIME. I REMEMBER MY MOM BEING VERY UPSET. BECAUSE I WAS SO YOUNG, AND DIDN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS HAPPENING, I WAS ALSO UPSET BECAUSE THE CHILDRENS SHOW THAT I WATCHED DAILY (THE BOZO SHOW ON CH.9 IN CHICAGO)WAS PRE-EMPTED.