I was recently having a chat with mum about this and I told her that the very earliest memory still with me is of me sitting at a kitchen table and eating a banana. When I described the kitchen to her she immediately recognized it as the kitchen from the apartment in Dover, Delaware, so I could not have been older than four years of age. What is your earliest memory and from what age?
My earliest memory had to be in preschool when my friends and I would sit behind the main building at recess and pick rollie-pollies out of the dirt. I'm guessing I was around 2-3.
I was recently reformatted, so I have no early memories... A lot of what I "remember" is stuff that I'm not sure if I actually remember or just things I've seen pictures of and heard stories about so many times that it seems like my own memory. But the earliest thing I remember for sure is being on the bus going to school one day when I was in kindergarten. I told my mom I didn't feel good, but I faked sick a lot in school (fourth grade, I missed almost an entire quarter...), so she sent me to school anyway. Well, we were almost to school, and my big sis was telling me a story to cheer me up, and then... I puked all over her. The other kids around us told her it was because I didn't like her story.
I don't know about "earliest" memory, but I can remember sitting in a playpen in the living of my grandparents' house. My mother and I lived there with them at the time. The TV was on to entertain me, while my mother and grandfather were at their respective jobs and Grandma was doing housework in other rooms. I remember Romper Room, Captain Kangaroo, and The Little Red Schoolhouse were everyday shows I liked, and I remember the television was a black and white console on legs with a rounded screen and a cloth covered speaker grille beneath. I don't think I was any older than two years old.
My earliest memory was of myself, sitting in the back of the car, counting on my fingers how old I was and how old I was going to be the following year. I think I was four.
I remember sitting in front of the living room couch with my little brother. He was in diapers and I was in pull-ups, so I know I was at least two and couldn't have been any more than three or three and a half.
My earliest memories are nightmarish. I would be screaming in my crib because strange creatures would be staring at me from my windows. I remember my parents turning the hall light on and coming in to pick me up. Then everything was better.
I remember being at Sea World with my parents when I was very young, like stroller age. I probably wasn't even two yet. I remember seeing the Shamu show, and he jumped, and all of us got splashed. I think I was happy about that.
Here's a big surprise, the most vivid memory I have is the first time I rode a horse. I was probably 4 or 5. I remember being lead around on some distant relations farm and I thought the man leading me was my father so I was talking away... Turned out it wasn't my father, just some other bald guy, and I remember being scared and embarrassed, cause no one else was around. The horse was sorrel and it was windy and overcast that day.
my earliest memory was.... getting hit in the face with a baseball bat (at about 5). i went to give my bro a thermos of water, and a kid was practice swinging and he hit me i cried and bled all over my awesome western-girl shirt, and i don't know whose car we drove to the hospital in, but it wasn't ours... and i remember my mom telling everyone the same story about the stupid emergency room doctor -- apparently i was getting x-rayed and the doctor kept telling me stuff like "stop crying, okay? it doesn't hurt that bad" so my mom told him, "let me hit you in the face with a bat and see if it doesn't hurt!" hehehe ((one of the few stories of my life where my mom is the hero and not the villan~!))
my earliest conscious memory is probably at about 3, when i saw some older kids 'stealing' blueberries from a bush next to our house and going out to do the same, to see what they tasted like... may explain why i've loved the yummy little things all my life... the earliest 'aided' memory [by hypnosis] is being somewhat under a year old and taking my first solo steps in my playpen, which ended with me falling and hitting my head on the wooden rail, while my mom sat chatting with a friend only a few feet away and not noticing either my great accomplishment, or its painful finale...
I can't believe I didn't notice that you said you were picking rollie-pollies out of the dirt before, but I just did, and I went "OH MY GOD! Someone else calls them rollie-pollies!" Seriously, my fiance and my sister's fiance make so much fun of us because we say rollie-pollies. That's what they're called. I don't care what anyone else says.
@ HN, they've always been rollie-pollies... in fact, i didn't even know it's actual name (not scientific) was 'pill bug' until i moved to a non-english speaking country
Well, apparently Joel's mom didn't want him to call them rollie-pollies, because he had only ever heard them called pill bugs. What a sad childhood for him...
Memories? Mother used to love opera. She'd play Bizet's Carmen and sing along with it while I listened and watched. She had an angelic voice. To this day, I love The Toreador music from that play. This repeated from my infancy until my brother was born when I was two. Mother stopped singing then and became sad most of the time due to stressful family matters. So, I'd have to say my earliest memory was sometime before age 2.
(I call 'em rollie-pollies too, by the way.) My earliest memory was when I got my first 'big-girl' bed. It was this twin-sized bed, and the headstand of the bed was shaped like house painted pink with green window shutters. I was probably about three years old... I pointed to each stuffed animal, one at a time, and my mom brought them over to me and tucked me in with them, so it 'felt like a crib.' I also remember throwing them all off the bed and screaming until (what my dad reckons was) about 4AM, until my dad finally set the crib back up.
My father lifting my up to a lightbulb and me touching it. It was hot. He died when I was four so it would be before then. Even though it hurt, it still seems a peaceful memory to me.
Rollie-pollies is far more descriptive. Your memory reminded me of an earlier memory than the one I posted. Growing up with 8 siblings in a tiny house, we always had bunk beds, but back when it was just me and my big sis, we didn't have them together. We still had the ladder, though, and we would lean it against one of the beds and climb up and play...I think we were pretending it was a castle or something, but I don't remember that much. Yay! I have memories before I was like 6. I was starting to wonder if I was the only person who couldn't remember things from earlier than that...
I was in my brother's room giving him a cup of water. It was evening. He was standing in his crib. So he would have been 2. I would have been 4. he will be 24 next month and I am 25 (we are just barely 2 years apart, my birthday is in September)
