What is your earliest memory?

I should probably be embarrased to report that my earliest memory is fairly recent. But my dear supportive wife assures me that as I get older I am not diminishing. Indeed, she says, I am GAINING a new faculty--for forgetting. And that does seem to be true. I forget much more often and easily than before, as I recall.

Sheesh, my earliest memory is nowhere near so dramatic: my training toilet. Not sure how old that would have been, but I'm hoping it's closer to 2 than 12.

Problem is, I don't have a lot of memories from my childhood before about 7 years, and what I do have I don't trust at all. I once had a dream about my dad eating a cigarette butt after he'd finished smoking it that I didn't realize hadn't actually happened for years. (Then again, since we had pot growing in the attic, it might have been a roach, dunno.) Very unreliable memory.


Individual and rosborne -- I often dream in third person, though I can never tell when I'm awake if I was a character or if I've added myself into the dream on waking. These dreams are very cinematic, too, and they frequently revolve more around imagery than narrative. A couple of examples -- a school of fish swimming into the shape of a face and then out of it again (perhaps lifted from a movie) and a very vivid dream I once had set in a courtyard of a strange house I'd stayed in in rural Greece, where someone I knew was playing a cello as her fingers disintegrated against the strings. Is there anything odd about your third person memories, or are they about mundane things?

One thing I think I've read is that we tend to actually remember the last telling, or proecessing, of a memory.

I've been asking the sozlet if she remembers when she was in my tummy since she was tiny, and she's told me things, but who knows. When she was maybe 16 months old she said it was "red" and "hot". (Signing.) Recently she said she remembered pushing with her feet and feeling squooshed.

That's interesting soz. Makes you wonder if she really can remember being born. Sounds like an idea that should be explored scientifically.

I think my earliest memory was somewhere between 3 and 4 years old.

In VERY vivid detail I remember falling down the first flight of stairs in my house onto the landing in front of the main door. The funny thing is, I don't remember what caused me to fall.

I just remember tumbling down. I kept my eyes open, and clearly watched the view go from the handrail, to stairs, to cieling, then wall, then finally to ceiling.

I stayed on the floor for a few moments, looking up at the cieling, no tears ( as I wasn't really hurt, just surprised, and no one was near me, so drama would have been pointless , and thats where the memory ends.

my memories
I think I may have a terrible memory because the earliest I can remember is around the time I was in Kindergarten. Anything before that seems to be lost in time. Although I can remmeber walking through a neighbors house and it was filled with exotic birds. The woman who lived there was very accentric and odd. I know my mother despised the sloppiness of the old woman. I however cannot remmeber what time period it was in. I may have been three or i may have been 5, i'll never know. But it seems as if I have an inferior longterm memory compared to most people. I can remember the oddest things but major events totally slip my mind. I remember slugs on the porch and a batman birthday party. But not anything about the move. Maybe I am prone to having a bad memory, what do you think?

I can remember having a dream when I was three, My dad, and sister were riding bike, and I was in on of those old bike carriers, we stopped at this cliff where a big brown ape man picked us up and took us to his cave, then I woke up. I don't know why that stuck!

I can also remember watching Mr. Dressup and all those shows while eating a bag of dry cereal. I always had dry cereal...lol

Also when I was three, I used to use pillow cases as sleeping bags...hehe...and I used to suck on my big toes...ewww....lol

There's only one early memory I can absolutely date. I was 27 months old, and it was the summer of 1958. We flew from Seattle to Upstate New York to visit my grandmother and a raft of uncles and aunts, and then drove back. I remember being absolutely terrified on the flight, but kept deathly still. I just knew that something horrible would happen if I made a peep. But after the flight landed I howled to high heavens. Then, weeks later, we drove back in a car without AC. We were on a highway paralleling a river (must have been either in North Dakota or eastern Montana) and we were all ready to melt. We came across a stand, north of the road and closer to the river, selling iced watermellon in the shade of big trees. We stopped, ate a bunch of watermellon, and cooled off before continuing the drive.

There are a few other early memories, but I can't date them.

I remember my mother rocking me, trying to get me to fall asleep, while singing the Brahm's Lullaby to me. She thought she had succeeded, but I was still wide awake, though with my eyes closed. She stopped singing and rocking, thinking to put me to bed/crib(?), but the instant she did my eyes went wide open, and I demanded "la la!".

A final memory. I don't know how old I was, but I do remember I couldn't talk yet. I was sitting in a high chair, and my sister (seven years my senior) walked by. As she did I very deliberately grabbed as much of her hair as I could, and yanked. She screamed, and said I did it on purpose (of course I did). But our parents said "oh no, it was an accident".

My earliest memory is being in preschool, 2 years old, and knowing how to read, since I learned pretty early. The teacher was a bit surprised. That made for an awkward time in my first year of preschool, I believe.

It was a while before my parents even knew that I could read.

So, who taught you how to read?

TV, seriously. Sesame Street.

EDIT: Rather, Sesame Street is what taught me how to read.

Coulda been worse.

My first TV memory was Dodo The Kid from Outer Space (B&W).

Given that I'm a sci-fi fan, and love science, I wonder if that early TV show set the course for my life... I'll never know.

My memory is so fuzzy... I can hardly make a timeline of the last 5 years of my life.

But I do remember waking up in the middle of the night to find my parents weren't home. I propped a tiny chair in front of the front door and looked through my picture dictionary in the living room. I remember being scared, but I kept my cool. Turns out my parents said they were just outside, and that they were so proud of me.

I also remember a beach towel with pastel trains.

My first memory can't be precisely dated as it is not of any special event. I know I was a baby and that I could not walk or talk.

I remember bouncing. To this day I don't know what the thing is called but I was strapped into a device made of soft, springy blue mesh stretched over a frame of some sort. All I had to do was kick my legs to make the thing bounce up and down. I loved that thing! I remember my mother slipping me into the belt thingie that held me in and going away to talk to someone, I don't know who or what they said, just the sound of voices. I can still see a fuzzy image of a room, I can't say where or to whom it belonged. I wasn't interested in anything but bouncing and even if I had been I didn't know any words (or even what words were) to ask.

I know I was wearing a jump suit (don't know what colour) and nappy (diaper) so I was very small but to this day, whenever I think of that bouncy thing, I can't help but smile.

I remember fallin out of a window when I was three and waking up in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and seeing my uncle who was a paramedic.

I remeber the day my sister was born which would make me just under 3 years old.

I think my earliest memory was playing outside in the snow the winter of 1978/79. I remember the year because we got a record amount of snow that year and my brother and I would jump off of the porch into huge piles of snow. We made tunnels under the snow all through our yard. I would have been older than 1 but younger than 2

!!!My first memory is the VERY SAME THING! No joke. I was playing in the snow, jumping off the darn porch and digging tunnels in the snow in our yard! I especially remember the snow tunnel part. Precisely the same as you describe, except I was probably 2 to 3 years old. (and no, we're not brothers!)

Strange. Very strange. Thats a very specific/odd thing to have in common as a first memory.

Is there something special in our brains with snow & snow tunnels?

Or perhaps, at that age, a snow tunnel is something so foreign to and unlike anything we've previously experienced, that something like this is more likely to leave a lasting impression in our mind? You know, suddenly being surrounded by something pure bright white, and very cold, engulfed in it...its a very different experience, especially the first time.

Anyone else out there have Snow Tunnels or Snow as their first memory?

Whew. I misread this and for a moment I thought you said "I remember the day I was born."

I was going to tell you to go on Oprah or something!

I remember V-J Day, or think I do. My Aunt never believed that I could really remember the occasion, since I was still almost an infant (09MAR41). Never the less, I remember hearing the announcement during the early evening. Everyone was sitting on the porch listening to the radio inside the house. The program was interupted, and all the grown-ups got very excited. My uncle was a naval gunner serving somewhere in the far Pacific. I think the family was very concerned about the dangers he would face in the impending invasion of the home islands. Even Mam and Pap were dancing around laughing and crying at the news. The next day, before sunup everyone was back to work. Ranch life has little recesses, but no vacations even for the end a terrible war.

I was going to write:

My first memory is being born. In the operating room, I cried with the pain of existence.
"What, back here in this dream world again? I still haven't progressed out of here? Now what did I do wrong that time?" I cried.
But no one understood me. They just smacked me on the butt, took a knife to the most sensitive part of me and cut me, wrapped me a blanket and put me in a little box to be by myself for awhile.

But I decided not to write that. Probably not a good thing to joke about.

EM, lol!

Well, okay if we're including THOSE memories, fine:

My earliest memory was working as a slave on some pyramid headstone for some king

One probably prior to that was when I was this diseased monkey in what I think was probably central Africa.

Then there was the time...nevermind...