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		What is your earliest memory? How old were you? (link goes to related story) (slate.com)		473
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8528 clicks; posted to Main » on 13 Apr 2012 at 3:20 PM | Favorite | share:

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Jake Havechek		2012-04-13 03:26:57 PM

I very vaguely remember all the hoopla for the Bicentennial in 1976.

Hollie Maea		2012-04-13 03:26:59 PM

I have a decent handfull of memories from before we moved when I was 4. One of the more vivid was when my sister got kicked in the head by a donkey. But I don't know how old I was in any of those cases, just that I was under 4.

CtrlAltDelete		2012-04-13 03:27:16 PM

We went over somebody's house. I have no idea whose. They had a kid who was older than me. He allowed me to play with his Lincoln Logs on their shag carpet. Before we left, I declared all of the Lincoln Logs mine.

To the surprise of everyone, he didn't protest. He even helped me put them in a box.

I thought that was cool.

Years later, I gave them to my little brother when he was old enough to play with them.

He fed them to the dog like treats.

I cried.

Rann Xerox		2012-04-13 03:28:22 PM

What is your earliest memory?

i78.photobucket.com

"Tell me about it and don't lie for I'll know."

luckcat		2012-04-13 03:28:33 PM

First: Moving into a new house and having to sleep in a tent in the living room with my entire family, because the house turned out to be infested with bats.

Second: my mother telling me that my kitten ran away, then my brother telling me that it was run over.

This exercise has now depressed me.

Fuggin Bizzy		2012-04-13 03:28:34 PM

I remember getting my diaper changed, laying on an orange towel draped over the washer/dryer, and watching the floaters in my eyes for the first time ever. I'd guess I was roughly a year old at the time, but obviously it's kind of hard to say for sure.

HailRobonia		2012-04-13 03:28:37 PM

Tarl3k: "Making snowballs with mittens sucks!!!"

You're just jealous 'cuz Mittens always won the snowball fight.

www.petside.com

Smelly Pirate Hooker		2012-04-13 03:28:57 PM

One of two (can't remember which was first):

Was watching TV and then went to ask my mother what a robot was (or something like that, I think I was watching "Lost in Space"). She was rolling her hair (ie, putting her hair in curlers; Google it if you're too much of a whippersnapper to know what that is).

or

Standing on the top of the slide in our backyard looking over the fences at other people's backyards. We lived in Peabody, MA at the time.

I believe I was 2 or so.

pedobearapproved		2012-04-13 03:29:57 PM

I was in a crib standing, my mom was picking me up after work. Very fuzzy.

WTFDYW		2012-04-13 03:30:02 PM

One year old. I remember my dad carrying me as we all were going through a house rom by room that we soon moved in to. I also remeber him carrying me out behind the house where the coal chute was. I'm 49 now, so that aint't bad memoryin.

Eunuch Provocateur		2012-04-13 03:30:11 PM

The Slush: Looking up at the sun filtered through the water of a pool into which I had fallen. Was probably a year and a half old, and to this day I still have issues with swimming

My first memory is similar. I was about 3 or 4, and my dad decided to teach me how to swim. The prick just threw me in the water and stood in front of me just out of my reach, only lifting me up for a breath if I went down for too long. Pretty effective, and traumatic.

Fark Irony Police		2012-04-13 03:30:34 PM

My 4th birthday. I went down the REALLY big slide at the park, landed on my ass. My uncle gave me a He Man action figure.
Great memory.

BurnShrike		2012-04-13 03:30:59 PM

Wow all you people remember some really early stuff.

I don't think I have any memories of being under 5 or 6. And I didn't even smoke weed back then.

Wrath of Heaven		2012-04-13 03:31:15 PM

I was 4 or 5 and I found my first Playboy in a stack of old magazines in the closet... it was a chick wearing nothing but a button down shirt and she was on a 10-speed bicycle.

I would love to find this issue.

HoityToity		2012-04-13 03:31:33 PM

2 years old, standing naked in the bathroom on a soft blue terrycloth bathroom rug.

Mom was kneeling down drying me off after a bath.

Dad came in the door from work; I remember hearing the front door open and shut.

Next thing I know, he's there in the bathroom with me and mom, smiling down at me. He hands me a box. It's a little Matchbox car; a green hovercraft.

We all hug.

First memory.

I lost it long ago, to my eternal shame. I can still remember it picture perfectly, though.

images.wikia.com

AugieDoggyDaddy		2012-04-13 03:31:36 PM

Probably 3. Grampa watching me stick a hairpin in the electric outlet.

I Like Bread		2012-04-13 03:31:39 PM

Escaping my crib. Not sure how old I was exactly, probably 2 or 3.

BeesNuts		2012-04-13 03:31:47 PM

CitizenTed: True story: my earliest memory is a snapshot of looking up at a summery window with light filtering through a set of dull plaid curtains. When I was still a kid I asked my mother about this memory. She thought about it, then she gasped! In 1965, when I was about 13 months old, the family went to the NY World's Fair and left me in the care of a neighbor down the street. They had those plaid curtains. That's the only time I was ever in their house. Weird.

My next memory is when I was 4 years old. We drove to California and I wore an Army uniform and saluted everything in sight. It was fun.

/BSB
/boring story, bro.

Similar. 3 years old. In a strange place, dim, smelling of laundry. I remember sitting at a card table. There is the murmer of adult women coming from a nearby kitchen, but I'm disinterested in that because there is a big fat tabby cat coyly sitting beneath my folding chair, batting playfully at my dangling feet.

Found out when I was like 15 that this was the one and only time I visited my great aunt.

probesport		2012-04-13 03:31:49 PM

The first thing I remember, I was lying in my bed. I couldn't've been no more than one or two.

And I remember there's a radio, coming from the room next door and my mother laughed the way some ladies' do.

p the boiler		2012-04-13 03:32:09 PM

I played a lot of football in my life - I am lucky if I remember lunch now

Jake Havechek		2012-04-13 03:32:15 PM

I remember seeing the evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon on the news at 6pm the day it happened. I asked my mother why so many people wanted to ride in the helicopter. She never answered me.

krackpipe		2012-04-13 03:33:06 PM

Nancy Reagan grinding her ass against me during a 2000 photoshoot for her new wifi product which was supposed to automatically read to kids. The Secret Service guys just winked at me. There was nowhere for me to run, I was up against a chain link fence and I was only 3. I'm not saying I didn't like it tho.

MadUncleEoin		2012-04-13 03:33:18 PM

It is either riding a bike out of my driveway onto the street, or playing on monkey bars at daycare while talking to the teacher. Either way, I would have been 4 or 5, since that is how old I was when I lived at the place in both memories. And that was in 1974/75.

angry_scientist		2012-04-13 03:34:03 PM

I remember a guy claiming to be my dad Capt. Walker, came home from war, killed Who I thought was really my dad. Mom and him told me I didn't see or hear anything, and to keep my mouth shut. It messed me up pretty bad for a while

Talos		2012-04-13 03:34:20 PM

Watching my older brother put together two tin cans and a string and talking to the kid next door from his bedroom window. Weird memory, but I was around 3 years old then.

Bowen		2012-04-13 03:34:31 PM

I remember being about 3 and jumping on my parents bed to wake my mother up. I assume this is several memories rolled into one, because apparently I did that every day.

Most of my early school-age memories are being hit by teachers or watching as teachers hit other kids and being glad it wasn't my turn that day.

Linkage		2012-04-13 03:34:47 PM

Getting my back scratched up trying to crawl under a barbed wire fence to pet horses... fence probably saved my life.

J. Frank Parnell		2012-04-13 03:35:14 PM

I remember so much from my first couple years of life i have trouble figuring out which is the earliest. Even remember taking my first steps.

Magorn		2012-04-13 03:35:41 PM

first actual narrative memory was when I was 4 and my grandmother told me my babysister wa coming home from the hospital, and then later that day holding her. That one is extremely vivid, I can see the room, my special white chair, the color and arrangement of the blocks on the floor, the other toys I had out etc (and the more I think about it as I write this , the more details emerge, like the color of grandma's dress what my mom was wearing etc)

From what had to be about six months earlier, I have a memory flash of my brother and sister's brithday party (they're twins) and sombody disturbing a hornet's nest that was under the teeter-totter in the back yard. That one is all screaming and running and pain and panic

nvmac		2012-04-13 03:35:48 PM

In the hospital for croup, maybe 3 or 4. A night workman checking on the 'tent' I was in had a piece of pie on a white ceramic plate and ate it while staring through the plastic at me. I still hate that guy.

silvervial		2012-04-13 03:36:04 PM

I have memories from before I was able to sit up unaided all the way through my childhood, so from about 2 or 3 months on up and continuing.

My first memories are getting a bath held up on my father's forearm as I could not sit up on my own and also lying flat on my back, kicking and squirming, trying desperately to reach the birds in the mobile over my crib. I remember the day I could first grab hold of my foot and put in my mouth, I felt triumphant. But the most powerful I ever felt as an infant was finally pulling myself up in my crib and grabbing one of the damn birds and biting the hell out of it.

My husband thinks my memory makes me freakish.

/shrug

nvmac		2012-04-13 03:36:30 PM

angry_scientist: I remember a guy claiming to be my dad Capt. Walker, came home from war, killed Who I thought was really my dad. Mom and him told me I didn't see or hear anything, and to keep my mouth shut. It messed me up pretty bad for a while

O_o

Jester6641		2012-04-13 03:36:31 PM

I remember picking out an ambulance matchbox car in the hospital gift shop when my little sister was born. I was 2 1/2. Also, around that time, my family moved out of their trailer (in West Virginia. Make jokes below), but a few years ago I stopped and drew the floor plan for the whole thing including furniture placements, materials, a description of the cat that lived there but didn't make the move and some other details that I had to remember but that wouldn't be told to me and wouldn't have been photographed. Once I started "walking" the place I could recall almost everything except, curiously enough, my room. That place is still a big, empty hole in my memory.

DrupyDrawrs		2012-04-13 03:36:40 PM

I do not remember anything before 2nd grade? 7 years old? The only thing is I remember my younger brother, mentally challenged, cried all the time.

bikerbob59		2012-04-13 03:36:44 PM

Two years old and hitting my sister in the head with a little plastic shovel.

Mentalpatient87		2012-04-13 03:37:04 PM

Probably 3 or 4. I swear this was my only "out of body" experience because I recall seeing myself sitting there making Snoopy Sno-cones on the floor of my mom's closet. The "camera" was moving in, I could hear a low drum roll, and then it was 1st person...

I'm pretty sure an active imagination made some of that up for me.

honeygrl		2012-04-13 03:37:43 PM

Standing by the train tracks when I was 2 or 3 watching the train go by.. I only know I was that age because we moved away from the house near the tracks while I was still a toddler. I loved standing there waiting to wave at the guy in the caboose. They don't have cabooses anymore though.

Linkage		2012-04-13 03:37:43 PM

Linkage: Getting my back scratched up trying to crawl under a barbed wire fence to pet horses... fence probably saved my life.

After my Dad's death.. probably 3-4

ByOwlLight		2012-04-13 03:37:52 PM

I think my very first one is from when my dad had to rush to the mall bathroom with me one time. The door to the bathroom had a mirror on the back of it (or maybe it was a wall mirror the door had blocked till it closed, who knows), so all I really have is this weird glimpse of me looking over my dad's shoulder at myself while he's running before the stall door closes.

It's either that one, or the one where my dad is carrying me through some parking lot to a building to turn in some papers, and my little kid mind knew we were at "school" and that was strange, because we only went to "school" for my mom, but we were there that day for my dad. The school was the University of Maryland, where my mom got her master's and then PhD, so we picked her up from there all the time and that's why it was her place. My dad was there to turn in his thesis for his master's or something, though. He'd been doing night classes so I had no idea, being so little.

HailRobonia		2012-04-13 03:38:54 PM

silvervial: My husband thinks my memory makes me freakish.

Either that, or the fact that to this day you still like to bite birds.

2_glass_eyes		2012-04-13 03:39:18 PM

My earliest memory was on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyworld. I could remember the cannons back-lit with red lights. I had no idea where it was and I was thinking it was a ride at Cedar Point (which is much closer that I went to every year) that was removed. Fast-forward to 2002, I was at a football game against UCF in Orlando and we went to Disneyworld the next day and on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and I realized I was remembering something from 20 years earlier when I was not even 18 months old.

Coelacanth		2012-04-13 03:39:51 PM

Sitting at the dinner table, listening to my grandfather telling me tall tales, my grandfather's parrot stealing grapes from the fruit bowl, while my grandmother busied herself frying thick slices of bread in beef drippings for everyone, and my alcoholic mother mercifully passed out in the next room.

Looking back, that was as close to Heaven as I'll will ever be.

powerful katrinka		2012-04-13 03:40:09 PM

Shortly after my 5th birthday my mother came into my bedroom and said, "Your daddy's dead." Heart attack in the wilds of northern Quebec on his summer job.

Coming on a Bicycle		2012-04-13 03:40:12 PM

Four. Seeing parachutists jump from the plane over the Canaries.

JohnnyCanuck		2012-04-13 03:40:37 PM

I remember getting baptized and how much it sucked when I was dunked whole into the water. I remember screaming/crying and how irritated my ears were after getting water in there. I remember the priests face and how much I did not like him for doing that to me.

\maybe what started me on my road to anti-religion.

bikerbob59		2012-04-13 03:40:57 PM

tuna fingers: Setting: Pocahontas, Iowa.
Sitting on the clothes drier watching my sister paint her turtle.

uuhhh....I'm not even going to ask....

leonel		2012-04-13 03:41:04 PM

I remember sitting in the family car and my dad had braked too quickly and sent me flying into the back of his seat. I didn't get hurt or anything but I recall quite clearly that he said something to the effect of "That's why you wear your seat belt!" Whether that was chronologically my first memory or not I don't know as I remember a few other ones.

Wade_Wilson		2012-04-13 03:41:14 PM

I was two and a half, and my grandmother came over to look after me for a while because my mom was in the hospital having my baby brother.

I thought it was awesome because she always had candy on her, and gave me juice boxes which I had never had before. Specifically I remember her driving me to the hospital and singing along when Tina Turner's "What's Love Got To Do With It" came on the radio (awful song, really).

When I met my brother, I gave him a rattle I had helped pick out from the store, and he "gave" me a box of crayons.

Coelacanth		2012-04-13 03:42:08 PM

Coelacanth: Sitting at the dinner table, listening to my grandfather telling me tall tales, my grandfather's parrot stealing grapes from the fruit bowl, while my grandmother busied herself frying thick slices of bread in beef drippings for everyone, and my alcoholic mother mercifully passed out in the next room.

Looking back, that was as close to Heaven as I'll will ever be.

Maybe four.

FarkinHostile		2012-04-13 03:42:52 PM

HailRobonia: FarkinHostile: I remember having my diaper changed and peeing in my Aunts face.

Just a quick blurb, really, and who knows how old I was.

28?

I was out of diapers by 25.

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