Earliest Memory...What's Yours?

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Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:52 am

It's difficult to recall an early memory with reasonable clarity.

Age 4. Not the first visit to the dentist but the most memorable one, for the wrong reasons.

Dragged kicking and screaming from under a chair, plonked on dentist's motorised couch, mouth forced open. Time for the first drilling and filling, this way or general anaesthetic. Mouth snaps shut, dentist's fingers trapped, later relaxing for the job to be done.

The dentist became a professor of forensic odontology several years later.

** ACCOUNT CLOSED ** Joined: 15 Apr 2007 Posts: 766

Devouring my twin brother.

What?

--J.D.

P.S. Venture Brothers reference.
P.P.S. Learning to walk.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:35 am

One of the earliest things I can recall vividly was when I was about 3 or 4. We lived in a rental house. In the garage was an evil looking monster laying on the floor in one corner. It scared the crap out of me to the point that I would not go inside the garage. It turned out to be an engine block from the landlords car. Why was I so afraid of it? I have no clue. Ironically I turned into quite a mechanic later in life and love working on engines!

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:54 am

Sitting in the middle of my uncles rhubarb patch with a little bowl of sugar I'd sneaked off the kitchen table, dipping raw rhubarb into it.
Can't stand the taste of rhubarb today, it makes my mouth curl. Confused

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:20 am

I have various random memories of when I was 3-4 but I have a really spooky 'memory' of being involved in a car accident (well, a bingle really)when I was less than a year old. I was laying in a carrycot on the back seat (no seatbelts, natch, this was 1843) and I have a definite recall of my parents' two anxious faces looking down at me from the front seats as the cot had slid forward and down between the front and back seats. Nobody was hurt but it could have been a very bad smash if my dad hadn't reacted quickly and swerved to avoid it so I wonder if their relief/adrenalin somehow 'imprinted' itself into my memory.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:25 am

Playing with the neighbour's pet kangaroo, then riding a skateboard down a long steep hill sitting down on the board and being sure that the same neighbour was going to make sure I didn't stack it.

I was wrong... but I had fun! Very Happy

Master Baiter Joined: 03 Jul 2007 Posts: 158

Mine was the earliest remembered memory I have heard of until I read Gnasher's.
@Gnasher - you will find most people who can remember earlier than 4 have some form of trauma atached to the memory they have. It all a psychological thing that I really dont feel like typing in detail! LOL

I was 2 years old - at my Grandparents caravan. I had just climbed up onto granddad's knee to say goodbye, but before I had a chance to, mum grabbed me off and bundled me and my older siblings into the car where I fell asleep. I never saw him again. He died about an hour later from Lung Cancer.

I am just glad that I get that one memory of him - no matter how heartbreaking.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 4:12 am

Interesting. Obviously I don't remember being 'traumatised' and as I say, nobody was injured but my mother tells me she was beside herself with worry that the baby (me) had been hurt. And it's certainly not a vivid memory as such - more like a vague snapshot/image from a semi-remembered dream if you can imagine that?

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 4:47 am

Interesting: four years with the first memories, so with me:
Four or five years old when I was given a metal bus (tin) and instead of "playing" with it I took off the car body and flattened it with my dad's hammer.

Another one: I fell with my trike; you can see the scar on my leg still today.

... and I locked myself in the bathroom at that time. My uncle, who was a policeman, came with his patrol car with "Blaulicht und Tat�tata" and freed me with a jemmy. Must have been fun for him; I'd like to ask but he died last year...

Last one, same age: Our neighbour asked me to buy some cigarettes (Peter Stuyvesant) at the nearby "Trinkhalle" (Kiosk?). I went there and because I hadn't understood the name properly I asked for something like "Peter Stuyvesant" adding (blushing) "I cannot speak that fast" (Ich kann nicht so schnell sprechen).

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:04 am

I think the age of 3-4 is when the brain starts putting memories into long term, or maybe thats just when we start realizing more stuff..I dont know mine was kind of traumatic so I guess thats why I remember it, the next would be when I was 6 finger painting in kindergarten Laughing

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:36 am

Reaper wrote:

I think the age of 3-4 is when the brain starts putting memories into long term

According to SCIENCE!, everyone gets "childhood amnesia". Here (again) is the Fun Facts link I posted at the top, but there's lots more to be googled on the subject. Interesting stuff...

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:37 am

I don't know how old I was but it was young. I remember this manx cat the family had and it was huge. Lucky for me it was friendly and lacked a tail (a tempting thing for youngsters to pull on). I just remember the thing walking up to me while I was sitting on the floor and rubbing on me whil I grabbed for fur. I think it ran away after a while of me being to ruff on it or something.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 6:11 am

Ooh, ooh, forgot one!

I remember being in the arms of someone being carried past a green car with wooden bits down the side.
My Mum tells me this was the shooting break we had and I was about 2.

Don't know what the trauma was though Confused

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 6:29 am

Mine is one of those early traumatic imprints, but it doesn't feel traumatic to me. It feels vague and unreal. I was somewhere around 3, and I ate a whole bottle of junior aspirin. I had to climb onto a chair then scale a bookcase to reach where mum had put her toiletry bag on a stay at my grandparents. I was taken to hospital and had my stomach pumped. I don't remember anything about it except a couple of very nebulous images, one of lying on a bed that more like a table with a nurse holding a rubber tube, and one of my mum and gran sitting outside on a bench near a flight of stairs with an ornate iron railing. For most of my childhood, my mum had to crush tablets into dust and mix it with jam before I would take them.

Gnasher's story about the car crash brought back a fleeting image of me on my mum's knee in the front seat of our old green split-windscreen Morris Minor, with my dad driving, and I guess I was about 4. Thanks, Gnasher. Smile

I also have clear memories of journeys home from my grandparents. We'd go to sleep in their spare room, then when it was time to leave, bundled in the bedclothes we would get carried out to the car and laid in the back of our estate car. I can recall the feeling of security being carried to the car and into our home when we got back, and in between lying half asleep cosily watching street lights go by, and almost wanting the journey to last forever.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 6:57 am

Eight wrote:

I also have clear memories of journeys ..

I remember some scenes of my first holiday with my parents in 1964 (4-years-old) in Sardegna. My first flight!
I had to wait 42 years to go to Sardegna again.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 6:59 am

Coming back from Butlins at Minehead in 1967, I was 4. We had a Ford Consul with a centre bench seat and I was sitting in the middle between Mum and Dad. We pulled up outside our house and I threw up over my Dad.
That's about my only memory of him, he died the following year, aged 32.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 9:01 am

about 3 years old: Lost on the beach - my mom found me back about 1 hour later (seemed to like half a day at that time) at the first aid post.

and another one: hiding away with my sister in the back of our dad's VW beetle (one with the very tiny read window it was) when going to pick up granddad.

Master Baiter Joined: 17 Jun 2007 Posts: 142

Hello World !

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:01 pm

I was about 2 or 3, I was at toddler group, there was a boy on a little plastic tricycle.
That's all I remember about the day, but it's still my earliest memory Razz

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:09 pm

Funny - I vividly remember my Kinder group and even the teacher Miss Jones who lived in a rambling old Victorian house with lots of dusty rooms and probably lethal applicances which we were allowed to explore dressed up as pirates and wizards. I remember my first day at primary school but the rest of those years are a complete blank! I know all these memories are stored away somewhere in our subconscious, and they randomly pop up in dreams or sudden recollections, but it's fascinating to see how mundane most of our first memories are. Having said that, I remember where I was when the news of Kennedy's assassination came over the radio (or wireless as it was called in those days). I was 3 years old (d'oh! now you can work out my age).

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

I can remember being at my grandparent's waiting for my sister to be born, and then later seeing her and the toy she'd "brought" for me. I also remember my parents asking which of two names I liked for her. She is eternally grateful to me for being unable to pronounce "Heather". I was a month shy of three years old.

A year or so later I remember being asked if I wanted to go to school. Foolishly I said I did.

There are a few undateable memories, like being held at a bus stop and stroking the fur collar of my mother's coat. I also remember often lying in my cot and watching bright stick-like things moving around the cot. I imagine it was some sort of optical illusion/sleep induced hallucination caused by the bars of the cot. Interestingly both of these memories are tied to memories of having remembered them later in childhood. It's possible that I have now forgotten the original memory and only remember the reconstruction. Which of course means that quite late in childhood I did still have access to these memories.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:21 pm

^^^ My sister was born at home amid huge drama and disruption. I witnessed most of it apparently, eyes out of stalks, and I don't remember one iota of it Laughing

I was 3. Obviously it wasn't traumatic enough.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 41

Being held down in an ice-water filled tub/pail thing because my fever was so high. I was two.

On a happy note, my son's pediatrician explained to me that they don't do this anymore.

edit to add 'don't'.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:48 pm

I was about 1 and 1/2 and my family was on vacation in St. Louis, Mo. We were swimming and there was a helicopter pad next to the pool. Well as we are swimming a blue and white helicopter lands. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen, of course being only 18 months old that isn't saying much but it stuck with me.

I also remember my mom being pregnant with my sister so I was around 2 then. She was substitute teaching then, I don't remember how I got to her class, but she made me stand in front of all the first graders. I remember being very scared and shy. I still don't like standing in front of people to give speeches and what not.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:35 pm

Red wrote:

Playing with the neighbour's pet kangaroo,

Either I'm drunk or I could swear that says your neighbour had a pet "Kangaroo". Nah, surely it can't say that! Dog, Cat, yeah, no problem. Some form of Reptile at a push, but a Kangaroo? I really must lay off the Scotch.

B-S

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