Earliest Memory

Ficheall

Lollipops23 wrote: »

I do think women can generally remember early years better than men

To be brought up in future arguments, no doubt.

Olishi4

I have a vague memory of going to some races with my parents, uncle and aunt when I was 2 or 3 and running around in circles with another child with a balloon on a string.

I have two young relatives with me this morning and I asked them what is their first memory. The seven year old said "my mam smiling at me" and the 4 year old said just "my mam".

osarusan

I can't be sure what are actually memories and what are memory-like reconstructions of stories I've been told.

Of things I know are really memories, there's nothing before I was 5.

Peregrine

Aint Eazy Being Cheezy wrote: »

I remember walking home from the hospital the day after I was born.

Wuss. I drove home.

Wibbs

My uncle bringing me a big black and white teddy bear*. He died when I was two and a half, the last time I saw him was my second birthday and that was his present to me. Another very clear one about the same time was when my mum was playing with me and her engagement ring caught and cut my chin. I don't remember any pain, but I do remember her freaking out and I remember the hospital and the stitches I got and then back home and ice cream. I've other vague memories of that time, but can't pin them down very precisely.




*it was the late 60's no fancy colour teddies for us. No sirree.

smash

Keane2baMused wrote: »

Some people say there's no way you can remember back that far, but I had to have been less than 2 (prob around 18 months) as my mother told me I was in a bed and a totally different bedroom from 2 onwards!

I'd say that all humans suffer from implanted or fabricated memories. It's Chinese whispers with your mind and even a photograph can trigger it. Most memories aren't true representations of events, your mind has created them.

Keane2baMused

smash wrote: »

I'd say that all humans suffer from implanted or fabricated memories. It's Chinese whispers with your mind and even a photograph can trigger it. Most memories aren't true representations of events, your mind has created them.

That's true but there have been studies done that show it is very possible for a 2 year old to have accurate memories of an event or time.

Olishi4

smash wrote: »

I'd say that all humans suffer from implanted or fabricated memories. It's Chinese whispers with your mind and even a photograph can trigger it. Most memories aren't true representations of events, your mind has created them.

ye I've heard it said, that you basically remember the last time you recalled it so it can slightly change each time.

arybvtcw0eolkf

My earliest memory is getting scaled by a kettle of boiling tea when I was three months old.

I remember the incident, clothes getting pulled off me etc, and I remember being bandaged up and my hands being tired to the sides of the cot so that I couldn't rub at my skin grafts. I also remember recognizing my father when he visited by a tattoo of an eagle on his hand.

I'm lucky it didn't get my face but my neck, shoulder and chest were all badly scaled.

And that's my earliest memory.

Speedwell

I told my mother once, "did we ever have a baby stroller that was partly blue?" And she said, "Yes, why?" I said, "I have a memory of lying in it on a sunny day outside, and realizing that there was something in common between the way the sky looked and the way part of the stroller looked, and that it was different from the blanket I had on. If I try to replay the memory in my mind, I remember a blue sky and that the stroller had a blue and black and white checked pattern and the blanket was pink." She looked at me kind of strangely and said, "We gave that stroller away when you were four months old."

intheclouds

I have an early memory of being terrified in a cot because a giant doll had been put into it. I remember waking up and seeing this huge thing in the cot and standing up and screaming my head off.

My parents later told me it was a huge doll they had gotten me for xmas. I would have been 2 - close to 3.

Another early memory I have has really affected me and how I see life generally. I remember being in a place with trees and grass, playing with my brother, in evening light. In my memory it was late summer/early autumn and the evening light was very yellow but it was warm and there were little motes floating about in the air.

My parents told me later that before my grandmother died they used to bring us with them when they went to visit her in the place where she was. It was psychiatric care and because we might have been frightened by the inmates (or the condition of the dying grandmother) we used to be allowed to play in the gardens. I was 3 when she died.

In my memory it was like The Shire in Lord of the Rings, yellow light, lush grass, trees, the warmth of the evening sun. My memory of it is like an impressionist painting.

To this day (40 years later) I stop when I walk out into light like that and drift off into memory. I also permanently yearn for that time of year and a green place.

I actually dont know where it was. I think it was Dundrum Mental Asylum (when it used to be called that). But I dont know if its still there.

Shenshen

One of my earliest memories would be of me sitting in my high chair at the table, on my own in the dining room. In front of me on the table there's a big tub of nappy-rash cream. I was sitting there remembering how my mother was putting face cream on herself that very morning, and I figured that if she does that, I should probably too.
So I somehow managed to get the cream over, got both my hands stuck in up to my elbows and started smearing it all over my face. And then someone came into the room and I remember lots of shouting and annoyed people.
My parents told me later that the stuff just wouldn't wash off. They had to use my grandad's old cutthroat razor to clean me up.
I still got amazingly smooth and radiant skin, so it must have worked.

manonboard

I remember my own birth. Just moments of it.

It's not a pleasant memory, and i'm sure I've modified it over the years.
Essentially it was painful, freezing, and dry. I remember being more content when i was near who must of been my mother. It's more like a sensation of warmth and not moving.

I've a few more about 1-2 years of age, then a steady stream.

I've a few of the pressure and tiredness of my leg muscles as i learnt to use them. It's like that feeling you get in your hand when you wake up, when you cant make a fist straight away.

There's another of a moment of consciousness before my birth. However it's literally a split second, i think i felt my hand at the end of my arm. Like a "more"

PMBC

Aint Eazy Being Cheezy wrote: »

I remember walking home from the hospital the day after I was born.

I remember going with my mother and father to buy the pram for me the week before. We were so poor it was a tar barrel sawn longitudinally in half and painted bright yellow. I wasn't happy at all.:rolleyes:

razorblunt

I'm always unsure if my earliest memory is exactly that or if I just cobbled it together from photos.

My earliest memory is either a family trip to the Isle of Man, I must have been about 3 years old if not less or getting a chocolate bar off my great-grandmother when she was walking through the sitting room. She died shortly after my sister was born (4 year gap between us) so I reckon I would have been a similar age.

chakotha

I was born in London and we moved back when I was 2. I can remember a few images from then.

Most vivid memory is getting my thumb caught in the door of a red phone box.