What is your earliest memory?

Forums: Philosophy
Email this Topic • Print this Page

This question may have been done before, but I can't remember, so here it is (possibly again) Smile

I'm curious to see how far back people can remember, and to what degree of accuracy. I'll give an example:

I remember events back to when I was two years old, but after speaking to my relatives who were there at the time, I find that the images and events which I remember are only only partially correct.

My sister is two years younger than I am, and I remember the day she came home from the hospital. We were living in the house in New Jersay, and Mom and I were standing in the hallway watching as a car drove up and my grandmother got out carrying my new sister. I jumped up and down and asked mom if I could hold the baby, and my mom said ok, but she told me to sit on the couch first (but I was too excited to sit, so I jumped up and down on the couch instead Smile

)

I can see these events in my mind, but they are not all correct.

For one thing, we were living in Alabama at the time, so the house and hallway were totally wrong. And of course, it wasn't my grandmother who drove home with my sister, it was my mother. And the lady in the hallway with me was my grandmother, not my mother. However, grandmom says that we did stand in the hallway and watch the car drive up, and I did ask to hold her, and she did send me to the couch, and I did jump around rather than sit. And it was the old white couch we had back when I was two, with the texture I remember, and which we threw away before I was three.

We know the date this happened, because we know when Mom and Sister came home from the hospital, so I was two years and two months old at the time. Forty years later, I find in hindsight, that my memory is clear, but inaccurate.

I cannot remember any events before this time.

Does anyone else's memory go back before two years and two months? And if so, do you have any measure of how accurate those memories are?

Topic Stats
Top Replies
Link to this Topic

Type: Discussion • Score: 2 • Views: 3,091 • Replies: 44

No top replies

good one...
I am not sure (will check with father tomorrow if he remembers) but I believe that my first memory dates from approx. same time as yours.
I was around two years old when they woke me up late at night, and mom took me in her arms and we went to living room where was my dad with blue bag in which was puppy...my first dog. I remember all of furniture details, but that is not so important, because I lived in this house until I was 6, so this memories may be mixed with memories from later...I remember however how my dad was dressed (can't remember about mom, I am just guessing, and probably it's a good guess, but still just a guess), I remember that I was sitting on a couch and I remember that my dad asked me what name we will give to dog...
I also have memory (but this one is not that clear) about my dad and me walking on completely frozen river that is near that house - that happened last time January 1977th (last time that river was so frozen that you could walk on it), when I was 23 months old. But this memory is blurred, I can't recall any details, I just remember that I was with my dad, and that river was frozen and that there were lot of people

0 Replies

I was in the high chair so I was maybe 2 or 3, and eating Life cereal with milk (my mother was feeding me). I finished the cereal but not the milk so she poured it into a red plastic cup and gave it to me to drink. I saw the bits of cereal floating around in the milk and threw the glass across the kitchen.

I also remember the carpeting in that house, as light blue, though my mother says it was light green. We moved when I was 5.

0 Replies

This question was posted on Abuzz years ago.

I remember walking around the corner of my house, past a running air conditioning unit, in the heat of the summer.

0 Replies

Same memory I wrote about on Abuzz. I remember clothes. Two corduroy jumpsuits, one pink, one blue, that snapped up the inner legs, so I must have still been in diapers.

0 Replies

Lots of "memories" we think we have from a long time ago are very inaccurate - I was doing some research into this recently and found it fascinating.

Anyway - the earliest memory I THINK I have was when I was still in nappies.

It is dark - and I am lying on the floor - living room, I think - and I am terrified - I can see a huge, strange, person hulking above me (details very unclear - blurred - by tears?) - she is trying to change my nappy, and I am TERRIFIED!!!! Screaming and such - thankfully, my familiar sister intervenes - I think my eyes are closed by then, she is just a familiar presence, and I calm down.

I am sure it was our very normal sized baby sitter, Miss Martyn, from a 2 year old perspective. Maybe the first time she came, and I was asleep when she arrived?

Things are so BIG and strange. It makes me think it may be a true memory - it is so unlike older memories - very accurate from a wee person's perspective.

0 Replies

Mine is a specific as hell, and i can still recall it in stark detail. I got up in the night, and went to the bathroom, where i found my grandfather shaving before going to work. I remember distinctly seeing him in his "poor boy" undershirt (i.e., no sleeves) with his braces hanging from the waist of his pants, and as i entered, he was stropping the razor. He lathered up the shaving soap, and applied it with a brush. (This is very likely the first time a saw any of these things--as i now know, he arrived at work at four a.m., so this was taking place between three and three-thirty a.m.) He looked down at me and smiled, and then began to scrape the whiskers from his face. Later that day, i got a wooden fire truck painted in bright enamel, and it was my fourth birthday. As i now also know that my birthday was celebrated on the day of my grandfather's birthday, which came about a week before mine, i can say with certainty that this occurred on the morning of November 2, 1954.

0 Replies

Nice stories everyone. Thank you Smile

0 Replies

I was three when my mother was pregnant with her second child. I remember looking up at her big belly and her telling me there was a baby in her tummy. When she gave birth (the baby was stillborn) I remember being at the hospital to take her home and she kissed and hugged me so tight and cried so hard it scared me and made me cry too.

0 Replies

I was about 18 mos to 2 years old, walking along with my mother, sister was in the pram ... I saw a truck turning the corner, a huge truck ... next thing I know I was laying at the wheel, the truck stopped just in time before rolling over me.

The strange part of this scene is that when the truck turned the corner, it struck a strange note, like it was going to mean something ... I often wonder why I remember it.

0 Replies

That must have been so creepy!

0 Replies

I seriously doubt that I really remember this because not only do I think that I have a video of it somewhere but I remember it from a third person perspective.

Basically, it's just me playing with my favorite truck in the gravel on a sunny day.

0 Replies

Individual wrote:

I seriously doubt that I really remember this because not only do I think that I have a video of it somewhere but I remember it from a third person perspective.

Third person perspective is a dead giveaway that it's not a direct memory.

Interestingly, I have a few third person perspective memories which are not even derived from films or photo's. Some of them can only be from stories I've heard, and yet I have images of them happening. Undoubtedly they are images I imagined when hearing the story, but when I remember them, I don't remember hearing the story, I remember *seeing* it happen.

0 Replies

It's interesting how the mind just fills in the images for you. Must easier to remember the incident than to remember someone telling you about it.

0 Replies

"goddam it's dark in here...."

0 Replies

hehe

0 Replies

"So nice and warm and--where's that light coming from?"

0 Replies

There are three things that I remember from a very early age, two of them are very well pinpointed in time.

In the main one I am sitting on top of a tall blue stool with Mum holding me from behind. I remember the gas fire and the pattern on the wallpaper. I also remember turning and looking at the French windows out in to the garden.
The wallpaper was a paisley pattern in shades of blue and white.

The French doors were removed in the late Summer of 1971 before I was two in November. The wallpaper was changed at the start of the Summer because Mum&Dad felt it was cold apparently. The gas fire was replaced in 1972.
So basically this one is from when I was about 18 months old. I was born on 2nd of November 1969.

I have a very, very clear memory of sitting on my Grandfather's knee at the piano singing Lilly The Pink with him. Since he died the day before my third birthday this is from some time before then.
I still remember some of the words.

There is another vague memory of my Mum looking over me and reaching down to pick me up and I can definitely remember the brown coat with a fur collar she was wearing. This one is very early indeed. I know it was early because I can't see things clearly whereas in the others I can make out clear details of things and remember what was said.

0 Replies

Heliotrope wrote:

In the main one I am sitting on top of a tall blue stool with Mum holding me from behind. I remember the gas fire and the pattern on the wallpaper. I also remember turning and looking at the French windows out in to the garden. The wallpaper was a paisley pattern in shades of blue and white.

I love the detail contained in some people's memories from these early times. And people's choice of words... "Mum" instead of "Mom".

jespah wrote:

I was in the high chair so I was maybe 2 or 3, and eating Life cereal with milk (my mother was feeding me). I finished the cereal but not the milk so she poured it into a red plastic cup and gave it to me to drink. I saw the bits of cereal floating around in the milk and threw the glass across the kitchen.

This one cracked me up Jes. Do you remember your motivation for throwing the cup? Was it disgust at seeing things floating the the milk, or was it something else?

Setanta wrote:

Mine is a specific as hell, and i can still recall it in stark detail. I got up in the night, and went to the bathroom, where i found my grandfather shaving before going to work. I remember distinctly seeing him in his "poor boy" undershirt (i.e., no sleeves) with his braces hanging from the waist of his pants, and as i entered, he was stropping the razor. He lathered up the shaving soap, and applied it with a brush. (This is very likely the first time a saw any of these things--as i now know, he arrived at work at four a.m., so this was taking place between three and three-thirty a.m.) He looked down at me and smiled, and then began to scrape the whiskers from his face. Later that day, i got a wooden fire truck painted in bright enamel, and it was my fourth birthday. As i now also know that my birthday was celebrated on the day of my grandfather's birthday, which came about a week before mine, i can say with certainty that this occurred on the morning of November 2, 1954.

Amazing detail. I can almost feel the early hours of the morning and the solitude.

Misti26 wrote:

The strange part of this scene is that when the truck turned the corner, it struck a strange note, like it was going to mean something ... I often wonder why I remember it.

A haunting feeling; with the last part added as an aside.

doglover wrote:

I was three when my mother was pregnant with her second child. I remember looking up at her big belly and her telling me there was a baby in her tummy. When she gave birth (the baby was stillborn) I remember being at the hospital to take her home and she kissed and hugged me so tight and cried so hard it scared me and made me cry too.

Thank you.

dlowan wrote:

Anyway - the earliest memory I THINK I have was when I was still in nappies.

It is dark - and I am lying on the floor - living room, I think - and I am terrified - I can see a huge, strange, person hulking above me (details very unclear - blurred - by tears?) - she is trying to change my nappy, and I am TERRIFIED!!!! Screaming and such - thankfully, my familiar sister intervenes - I think my eyes are closed by then, she is just a familiar presence, and I calm down.

Nappies... never heard that before. Saved from the strange and giant babysitter by the familiar sister. So small.

Thanks again everyone Smile

0 Replies

I had a nice post describing myself in 1947 but I forgot what I did with it Laughing

I can remember MacArthur coming home (We'd just got a TV) but I can't find my glasses.

Selective memory syndrome I hope.

0 Replies

What is your earliest memory?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know