Earliest memory?

[Lamb]

What is your earliest memory (memories)?

 

[Tigger]

I was at least 3 maybe 4, I would wake up at 6am and turn the tv on to watch Captain Kangaroo!

 

[Josiah]

Problem is..... our earliest memories are very likely false. At least in details.

The ONLY way an early memory is "remembered" is if it is often recalled. And every time we "recall" something (accessing that "memory") we change it and then "store" the CHANGED version. After a few times of doing this, it can have little resemblance to the original event. This is not just true for early memories, it's true for all of them.

I have a memory from when I was 5 (not especially early) that I recall often (a surgery) but I've "checked" it with both parents (separately since if you do it together, what each says changes what the other remembers) and I think I have it at least close to reality but it's impossible to know. In my case, I remember details..... actual sentences, visions of things.... and it's VERY unlikely that those are factual: At some point, as I recalled things, I thought/felt/envisioned things and that got put into the "file" and now is "remembered." Since only the edited/changed "memory" is filed away (the original displaced), there is actually no basis in our own memory to know whether what we are recalling is factual. Especially if we've spent a lot of time with the memory; the more you think about it the less accurate it probably is. Seeking what OTHERS remember can provide a "check" but remember: their memory too has been modified and is being modified as you discuss the event with them (as is yours).

 

[IACOBVS]

I would have been one year old. My mom's uncle and aunt and cousin came to visit and give me a stuffed monkey toy. It probably would have been nearly as big as I was, I was terrified of the thing. I don't actually remember receiving the gift, and I didn't want anything to do with it for a year or two afterwards. However, my only actual memory of the surrounding event is of the visitors all sitting in a row on the couch on the living room. I know that I was one year old, because my mom told me that her uncle died the autumn of that year, so it couldn't have been a memory from a later visit or something ... unless he was haunting me for hating his gift.

 

[Lamb]

I remember when I was a year old going outside to retrieve a toy that I left out there and my mom told me to get it. It was very hot outside and being short and close to the ground it was even hotter for me. I just remember that it was a long walk out to that toy! And I was miserable. I didn't think in sentences but in feelings. My feelings were not of happiness that day LOL When I was older I drove by that house we rented and that long walk was probably 15 feet! ha

I also remember from that same house and around the same time some kids throwing rocks at the window. We were on the 2nd floor. They hated our dog and threw rocks at her. I remember looking down at them but I got yelled at to get away from the window. I think I must have climbed on some furniture.

I also remember someone coming to the house and I hid under the hutch. I looked at that hutch years later and realized how tiny I was to fit there!

 

[NewCreation435]

What is your earliest memory (memories)?

The high school band use to practice by marching down our street. I remember running to the end of the driveway and watching them. All those shiny instruments were really cool. I was around 2 or 3 years old

 

[Stravinsk]

My earliest memories (don't ask me which one is "the" earliest) have to do the first house I grew up in.

The first is just a picture of a living area in that house. A still picture in my mind that is rather vague but includes my mom.

The second is the residence of a girl down the street who I had a crush on - and an early fantasy about her.

The third and fourth are memories of the neighborhood troublemaker and a fairly large church we attended.

 

[hotrhymez]

Playing in the backyard sand box at our old house..i was around 5

 

[IACOBVS]

My earliest memories (don't ask me which one is "the" earliest) have to do the first house I grew up in.

The first is just a picture of a living area in that house. A still picture in my mind that is rather vague but includes my mom.

The second is the residence of a girl down the street who I had a crush on - and an early fantasy about her.

The third and fourth are memories of the neighborhood troublemaker and a fairly large church we attended.

That troublemaker was NOT me, regardless of what MoreCoffee might say to the contrary.

 

[Stravinsk]

That troublemaker was NOT me, regardless of what MoreCoffee might say to the contrary.

Of course he isn't you. I was a toddler and the man was a young adult at the time. He's probably dead now, in jail or somewhere else. ?

Funny thing though - I still remember his name: Fabian. I just looked that up. Something about popes and or beans. To me, that name has always just meant one thing: trouble.

 

[Lamb]

James was trying to lighten it with humor


My grandparents used to have a tiny cottage on a river and I'd go there a lot as a toddler and young child. That hour and a half car ride took forever since there was no air conditioning!

 

[Imalive]

I remember I sat in a plane w 3 or so and as a baby laying in the living room and they were watching tv w Indians or something. I remember very well when I was 3 and biking outside I found a plastic kids shovel and thought: how nice and picked it up. Then a few big boys came and hit me on my hand and said I was a thief. I screamed and cried really loud, met an older girl from the apt who said: what's the matter? I said nothing but kept screaming all the way home to my mom LOL. Bozo's. I found it.

 

[Imalive]

I would have been one year old. My mom's uncle and aunt and cousin came to visit and give me a stuffed monkey toy. It probably would have been nearly as big as I was, I was terrified of the thing. I don't actually remember receiving the gift, and I didn't want anything to do with it for a year or two afterwards. However, my only actual memory of the surrounding event is of the visitors all sitting in a row on the couch on the living room. I know that I was one year old, because my mom told me that her uncle died the autumn of that year, so it couldn't have been a memory from a later visit or something ... unless he was haunting me for hating his gift.

I vaguely remember something like that. Yes it was a toy I got from an aunt or something. It hung in my crib and it terrified me and then they were watching I guess it was a western on tv. Very traumatic those stuffed animals lolz.

 

[Imalive]

I only remember that horrific traumatic stuff.
Once when I was 3 my mom got mad. She spoke in an angry tone to my friend who threw her jacket on the floor. I was shocked. My mom could get angry?? But pfeww it was just a joke from her.
Oh and w 5 we were on a holiday to Spain w the car and had cookies and we were all hungry, but I got one or 2 cuz I was small and my brother and sister got a whole bunch and I said: I will never forget this. When I'm old and you come visit I buy a whole bag of cookies and eat em all myself and give you one. Oh and the horror, my dad let my brother sleep in the car on my favorite toy dog cuz he had no cushion. Lol and later w a holiday in Spain I won some huge plastic donkeys and my dad had to drive all the way back w 5 people in a tiny car and all our stuff and that huge donkey was in his neck. He could hardly drive.

 

[Josiah]

My wife remembers a tea cup incident, and because she remembers the house (and they moved from there around the time of her 4th birthday) it had to be early.... Her mom says she was 3.

Her mother had a prized tea cup, given to her by a great-grandmother. It was in a prized place, but now within reach of my wife. One day.... she remembers looking at that cup, and remembering she was strongly forbidden from touching it, but somehow her arms and hands reached out and next thing, she was holding it. And yup, it slipped from her hands and crashed on the floor, breaking into pieces. She screamed and her mom came running into the room, saw the broke tea cup, scooped my wife into her arms and asked if she was hurt. She told me this.... saying it was one of her earliest memories, confirmed by her mom. And it was a lesson not so much about tea cups as about love.


- Josiah