Carefully placing this topic at Shegirl's feet lest she beat me over the head with a 2x4... I was watching a clip of Louis CK this morning where he was talking about his earliest memory. He was 4 years old and shitting his pants on the front lawn. It made me think back to my first memory. I was about 3 and my memory was of flying through the air on the street where Chinese Grandma used to live. I told my mom that a few years ago and she was horrified. Apparently when I was 3, she was pushing me in a stroller and I unbuckled my safety belt just as she hit a bump in the pavement and I went flying out of the stroller and smashed my face into the sidewalk. She had trouble convincing the people in the hospital that she wasn't neglectful as a parent and Child Services nearly took me away. Focus: What's your earliest memory?
My Mom doesn't believe me when I tell her my first memory, which is of my Dad leaving. But I can picture the kitchen, the house, the steps down to the driveway. So what if I was 2 1/2? Last time I was home, she and I went to dinner and then drove by that house in northeast Minneapolis that we lived in at the time, and I pointed out which one it was when she couldn't remember. I also remember burning my chest in that kitchen when i was 3, because I climbed up on a stool to look into the pot of boiling water and spaghetti noodles and leaned in too close.
For some reason I remember my dad riding a moped and taking a header right by our 1972 singlewide trailer at the bottom of the hill and how bloody his leg was and how bad my mom was freaking out.
Re: Thread Suggestion Thread What if she was asking for it? Focus: My earliest known memory was when I saw a little girl get run over by a tractor trailer truck. It was devastating. I remember hearing her screaming but it was quickly muffled by truck brakes grinding to a halt. The driver got out, his face was white as a ghost. He stumbled around dazed while screaming people ran to the see and the girls mother was crying out. You always see in movies how people scream towards the heavens when they lose someone close to them, this was the only time I have seen it since. The police had to pull her off her daughters body while the EMT fruitlessly tried to revive her. Right after that my dad realized the woman standing next to us watching everything go down was the little girl's grandmother, who was tasked with watching the girl while the mother was in the house. My dad, clearly trying to keep it together, asked the woman if she needed anything as she was clearly in shock. She turned to my dad, looked him dead in the eye and said, "I need about tree fiddy." It was at that time that we realized the woman was a 500 foot tall crustacean from the paleolithic era. The fucking Loch Ness monster had gotten us again!
I remember the family room of my parent's condo in Indianapolis. My mom used to put me in one of those bouncy swing things to watch TV in the morning while she did stuff. Considering we moved right around the time I was 2, that's pretty early. I can also pretty vividly remember both my preschool classrooms, which was age 3-4.
This might be interesting with a poll - I am curious what is the earliest time people have memories. It's also interesting whether they are good or bad. My first memory is laying on a bed and drinking chocolate milk from a baby bottle at my grandparents' house, I was probably around 1 year old, and I remember being very content. The next one is playing hide and seek, deciding that standing on a brick is the best place to hide, and faceplanting on said brick.
My earliest memory was when I was probably five or so. I remember fishing for blue gill with my uncle and my grandpa at a lake close to the church. I wasn't catching any fish and saw my grandpa was, so I moved to where my grandpa was and took his fishing spot. I don't remember much about my childhood, but this is the one that clearly sticks out to me.
I find it interesting many of the ones posted so far involve an injury of some kind. Mine happened when I was some where around 2. I was crawling and some how got past the baby gate. Our dog at the time was a huge German Shepard, he pulled me back from the edge by whatever I was wearing.
I very clearly remember my au pair (shuttup, yes, we had an au pair from England for 6 months after my sister was born). I was 2.5 when she left for home, so that's pretty early. However, she was talked about so much even after she left, and we visited her and she visited us multiple times over the years, so that could be one of those false memory situations. I remember the carpet in the hospital where I had eye surgery. Most likely this was when I was 3, since I had surgeries at 6 months and 3. (Successful in that my right pupil no longer points at my nose, but unsuccessful in that I still lack depth perception.) I also remember very clearly playing on the playground at my preschool, and holding hands with my preschool BFF, which was probably around 3 or 4. It was one of those badass playgrounds from before lots of regulations came into play, with sturdy wood and metal structures and a giant sand pit.
I was 3 and petting Bridget the Poodle on my grandma's front porch step. My mom and grandma came outside, and we took my grandma's truck to go to her land. I remember needing help with the seatbelt. We had a picnic and I got to pet the horses. Wheeee.
My earliest memory is being three years old, and being at Sesame Street on Ice, circa 1984. Why this stands out as my first memory is beyond me, though. The next memory I have is being courtside at the Celtics at Boston Garden yelling for Larry Bird to give me an autograph. Bastard never did.
I have a lot of flashes of memory and things that are more a sense memory, and I'm not entirely sure what the timeline is of my early memories, but I'm pretty sure my earliest full memory was from when I was 3. (And even that's just deduced by knowing that my grandpa died when I was 4 and assuming this is too much to remember from when I was younger than 3.) Anyway, I remember being woken up by my mom in the middle of the night in my grandparents house in Queens and being told that we were going to California (where her dad lived). I don't think I had been told that was happening because I was surprised and kind of scared and, for whatever reason, jumped to the conclusion that we were leaving my dad forever. Then, I remember sitting in the living room of my grandpa's house in California very content - so I had probably been filled in that we were just visiting at that point. It was really sunny and my mom and grandpa were in the kitchen, cooking. I was sitting on the floor playing with a Jacob's ladder and still very vividly remember the clack-clack-clack of the pieces hitting each other over and over and over.
Couldn't tell you how old I was. Mum was making me eat a carrot, and I didn't like it. So when she left the room, I threw it into the bin. She came back into the room, and was onto me straight away. I'm a lot better at lying and tricking people now I guess.
My most vivid memory was actually a nightmare I had when I was in grade school. I wanted to go play at the neighbor's house down the street so I ran down there with my brother. The house was on fire and my friend's body was slumped over her outside window with her body blazing. I screamed and ran home only to find now MY house was on fire and my parents and sister were dead inside. And to think I turned out "ok".
Mine's pretty mundane, I don't know why my long term memory kicked in when it did. We lived in an apartment building, and I was friends with a little girl who lived down the hall. She came over one day and her mom had painted her nails red, and I remember thinking that was weird because I didn't know what nail polish was. I didn't understand how her nails were so red. I noticed that if I pressed my fingers against something my nails would turn red from the pressure, and I just assumed she had figured out a way to make hers stay red all the time. I was about 3, but wish I knew exactly when that was... it was probably 1990, but it could have been late '89. So I'm not sure if I can remember the 80's or not.
I remember my aunt making coffee for my grandfather. He liked his coffee boiling, and instant. She was stirring the coffee at the edge of the table when it fell and dumped down her pants legs. She screamed, and stood there looking at her legs and I remember my dad jumping up and flipping open his knife and cutting her belt and ripping the pants off her and she screamed the whole time...The water landed on her thigh and ran down her leg and pooled in her boot, and they were trying to rip all the clothing off her. She was wearing brown pants, and a white shirt, and a vest over the shirt that matched her pants...the pants were corduroy, and she had a belt buckle on. I mentioned this to my parents once, and they were both quite surprised I remembered it so vividly since I was something like 18-20 months old. That shit was horrifying. I take my coffee at 140, thank you very much. No scalding or skin grafts for me.
August, 1993. I had just turned 5. I remember pacing between my room and the hallway because I was very anxious about starting kindergarten the following day. Like Louis CK, I vividly recall that being the point I "went online," and everything before that is a haze. The I had a peanut butter sandwich, because fuck you.
I have a bunch of early memories, not clear which would be the earliest. When I was little I loved to climb into cabinets and hide in this coffee table cupboard. One day I crawled into the kitchen cabinet with all of the tupperware in it with a fresh kiwi I got out of the fridge. I then proceeded to peel it little by little with my teeth and spit it on the floor. There are other memories that might be older than that but Im not sure if my mind just filled them in because my mom ended up taking pictures of them, like smearing yogurt in my hair while in a high chair.
I vividly remember my third birthday and that's probably the oldest memory I have. Most people will remember it for the day that Nirvana's "Nevermind" came out but I remember getting a big wheel and a pedal powered little tykes "tractor" with a bad ass trailer that hooked up to it. I remember riding that thing up and down the block at the babysitter's house and my mom and dad coming there on their lunch breaks to have lunch with me and have a little party. I also remember that halloween when I dressed up as one of the 101 Dalmatians. I can remember the first song I ever heard, "Only the Young" by Journey. I got a small boom box when I was around a year old (fuck you I've seen the home video). I was probably around 3 and my dad gave me a Journey tape to play in it. I played the fuck out of that tape and eventually it quit working. I'm a little sad that Journey is the first thing I can remember listening to. Why couldn't my dad have given me a Led Zeppelin tape or the Stones? Something other than fucking journey. I cannot stand them.