What are your earliest memories?

freshpopcorn

I am trying to think of mine.
I have memories of Christmas mornings when I was younger and the stuff I got and other bits and pieces,

I can also remember a car accident in which somebody died near my house when I was about 3 or 4.

From when I turned five or there about I have a much better memory of things.

What are your earliest memories?

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

At this point I don't know what are real memories, as opposed to those imagined from others recounting events, photos etc.

Stevieluvsye

Watching Carly Simon play a gig in front of a few hundred people in my local field in D24 when i was 4

I only ascertained it was a dream many years later :rolleyes:

mighty magpie

Fighting at a playschool sports day with a classmate
Opening sega mega drive me and the brother got for christmas and playing my 1st ever game which was sonic.

Pauliedragon

I'd say Christmas too but it's hard to define which memory is older than another one.

Pauliedragon

I'd say Christmas too but it's hard to define which memory is older than another one.

Getting out of my pram for the last time and refusing to go in it again. Mother was wheeling g me down to Rathmines, it was pouring wet, and I wanted to feel the rain. The funny thing is that I remember it was opposite a green shop. My mother told me I was under two at this stage.

I have an even earlier memory, a very early one indeed. My parents had lost their first baby due to Asian Influenza, I came to them in their early 40s, and very precious. They brought me as a baby out to Mum’s sister’s house in Bray one Sunday afternoon and I was settled in a cot to sleep. My 7 year old cousin there had hay fever and was sneezing. Some time later when my mother came back into the room I started sneezing, and there was consternation as they feared I had caught a potentially dangerous respiratory bug. I clearly recall the sea of faces and voices around me, and having tons of bedding put in top of me so that I was sweltering and wanting it off me. Then my cousin came back into the room and started sneezing again (my mother hadn’t heard her sneezing earlier) and I immediately imitated her and started laughing, much to the relief of my parents. I was born with a sense of mischief, and a love of imitating people! For this reason I always hold that young children take in a hell of a lot more than adults credit them for.

My own mother had very early memories of her childhood, like the birth of her younger sister when she was two-she specifically remembered asking the maid (yes they had maids in 1920s), who was asked to distract the children did she knit the curtains, as she was closing them to “darken” the house for the imminent birth.

harry Bailey esq

I went to Bray with me nanny and granda on the first day the dart started running. I'd have been 3 at the time. I can also remember going to playschool in the old SFX building on fitzgibbon st. Also aged about 3. I went to a few raves there as a teenager too in the 90s, but curiously I remember the playshool more vividly than the parties.

nthclare

Being at the funfair in Ballybunnion and had a sand shovel with a clear handle full of water and a fish which used to go up and down depending on which way you turn it..

And Come on Eileen playing in the background, chairaplane's swinging around

Arghus

Going to visit in the hospital when my sister was born, I was three.

I barely paid any attention to her, I was more interested in the television in the hospital room that you had to put money in to make it work, that blew my mind. Emmerdale was on.

Nunu

I remember a specific detail of my birthday possibly 3rd more likely my 4th birthday.

It was bed time and I was bringing one present with me I got of a transformer...this wasn’t Optimus Prime now or even Megatron. You know it mightn’t have even been official merchandise.

Anyway, whatever this ‘Transformers name was he was the dogs bollix! It was actually quite small but it was a silver Rolls Royce that transformed into a robot with a black top hat! He may even have had a dickie bow?

I bloody loved it.

Redneck Reject

Making the trip from Virginia to Culiacan Mexico in 1975.My mother was sad most of that trip. Funny how as you get older you remember more and more details like that.

harry Bailey esq

Arghus wrote: »

Going to visit in the hospital when my sister was born, I was three.

Emmerdale was on.

Ah yer only a young whippersnapper so... I remember when it was all just fields, and it was called Emmerdale Farm.

Apiarist

I remember my mom changing a diaper on my sister who is 1.5 years younger than me, I must have been 2 at the time.

Another memory’s being in Dublin Airport Control Tower as a very young child, early 60s, in old terminal building and eating sausages with the staff. I was mesmerised by it all and it fostered a lifelong passion for aviation. My parents were friends of Tom Donovan, the then Chief Controller.

We went out to the airport frequently enough back then, as did many Dublin people. There was a great viewing balcony and everybody in those days waved there relatives off with various coloured scarves for identity. Going off in an airplane was like going up in space would be now, only business people (virtually all men then) could fly. Very rarely a wealthy relative might go to America to visit another relative, and it would be an occasion for extended family to see them off.

The various aircraft and attendant vehicles fascinated me, and I would go home and draw pictures of the Viscounts (later was delighted to be on one of last ones flying), Fokker Friendships, Super Constellations (they were in short service) with their radial engines, and the Boeing 707 jet. There was also a remarkable sight to be enjoyed, the so-called “pregnant-guppy”, a Carvair which ferried cars. It was some sight to see cars driving on board an airplane at Dublin Airport.

At a young age my father explained the basic principles of aerodynamics and how an airplane is controlled. When I began working, one of first things I did was learn to fly an aircraft.

wiggle16

Walking across the countertop and falling into the kitchen sink.

Was a very good climber as a toddler.

Gynoid

I was quite small, under 3. We lived in a very old cottage with thick walls, and deep window sills. One morning very early I awoke in a bed laden with heavy old fashioned blankets and immediately was aware that something was different. There was an unusual silence and stillness in the room and a strange crystalline quality to the faint light coming through the curtains. Even though so small I was impressed by this sensory oddness - I can recall it exactly, this sharp heightened awareness. I went to the window and the moon was shining full on a world suddenly blanketed in drifts of snow. The feeling was breathless astonishment and awe. An utterly magical universe. Thats my earliest real memory. I still feel an echo of that awe now when I wake up to snow.

Very evocative, Gynoid.

I've a few, and I don't know which is earliest. My grandmother bathing me in a big white sink, hitting my head on furniture, looking at the family dog watching over me through the bars of my cot, my father throwing me in the air and that delicious terror when I'm out of hold, yet knowing he'll catch me, my grandfather putting little round black stickers on a globe to show me all the places he'd been, my mother singing disco tunes and telling me I'm a very big girl as I sat on the potty, being lifted out of my car seat and carried up to my bed in a fluffy yellow onesie holding my blankie after watching the street lights drift by on the way home from wherever.

I get a little heartache remembering things like that.

Better Than Christ

My earliest memory that I can be absolutely certain is genuine (and not based on events recounted by others) is visiting my newborn sister in the old maternity unit of Loughlinstown Hospital. I can vividly remember my dad lifting me up so I could look through a window into a room full of babies sleeping. Apparently my response was "Ok... I need to do a poo". I don't remember that (and frankly, I dispute it, because I would have been wearing a nappy at the time, which would have allowed me to poo without needing to announce it in advance).

I was twenty-eight years old.

Church on Tuesday

Prob when I locked my Mother outside in the pouring rain when I was about 5 (I apparently found it hilarious) by closing the front door after her and then having her try to communicate to me through a half open old school window where the spare key was in the house as I was too small to open the front door from the inside.

Can still see it now

Four Phucs Ache

Sitting/ lying in the passenger footwell of my dads fiat 131 circa 1983, when I was 2 or 3.

I was trying the get my ears beside the speaker to hear what I later discovered was the song steve Miller's abracadabra. I was transfixed to it.

I know i was that young because any older and I wouldn't have managed it.

I remember listening to it and looking up and across at my dad driving , watching him drive, like a voyour type experience.

bunderoon

Sitting on a potty watching Bosco and eating a heel of bread. Mam reckons I was 2 and a couple of months as I was toilet trained shortly after that.

igCorcaigh

I remember being in a buggy of some sort.
Being rolled in something anyway by my local shop.

Around 3 or 4 I guess,or earlier?

Maybe it's just a memory of a memory, but it stands out in my mind.

I'm not sure when consciousness or memory forms in a young child.

retro:electro

In a buggy being pushed down the road by my mam with my brother in front of me hitting me on the head with a balloon on a stick

bunderoon

Four Phucs Ache wrote: »

Sitting/ lying in the passenger footwell of my dads fiat 131 circa 1983, when I was 2 or 3.

I was trying the get my ears beside the speaker to hear what I later discovered was the song steve Miller's abracadabra. I was transfixed to it.

I know i was that young because any older and I wouldn't have managed it.

I remember listening to it and looking up and across at my dad driving , watching him drive, like a voyour type experience.

: ) that song is also part of my earliest memories. My Aunt (Mams youngest sister) lived with us while she sorted out a flat - she had moved to town as she got a job in a local chemist straight out of school. She used to sing that to me and then do the actions with her hand to 'reach out and grab ya'.

igCorcaigh

nthclare wrote: »

Being at the funfair in Ballybunnion and had a sand shovel with a clear handle full of water and a fish which used to go up and down depending on which way you turn it..

And Come on Eileen playing in the background, chairaplane's swinging around

Must have been around 1982?
That's the year in June that the song was released.

Trigger Happy

Sucking a tube of ketchup like it was a bottle of milk. And the sick after.

igCorcaigh

bunderoon wrote: »

: ) that song is also part of my earliest memories. My Aunt (Mams youngest sister) lived with us while she sorted out a flat - she had moved to town as she got a job in a local chemist straight out of school. She used to sing that to me and then do the actions with her hand to 'reach out and grab ya'.

I remember that song very well too.
I must have been nine.

I moved house in 1980 when I was 7.
It's a good time marker.

I am for a long time convinced I remember being bathed in the kitchen sink. I even remember the view out the window beside the sink when it happened.

My mam insists its not possible - she only did it from 9 to 12 months of age.

Ubbquittious

Lying in a cot, being wheeled around Cork and Mallow in a pram, accidentally setting off a very oldschool alarm clock. I'd say I was younger than 3 for those. Also remember my 3rd birthday. Going on a road trip with my ma and her friend and stopping at some peculiar lay by with a large face of rock with trees around it

igCorcaigh

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I am for a long time convinced I remember being bathed in the kitchen sink. I even remember the view out the window beside the sink when it happened.

My mam insists its not possible - she only did it from 9 to 12 months of age.

Interesting...
Can memories form that young?

I had a random chat with a woman in a bar recently who claimed to remember being in the womb. She didn't seem like the sanest person to be honest.

igCorcaigh

It's a funny thing.

When I think of my earliest memories, there only seems to be a view of what I was seeing. No emotional context, or what I was feeling. Just an image.

My first day at school is a strong and fairly complete memory. I was 4, and it was a fifteen minute walk from house to school. About a third way there I pulled my mother out on the road when I saw a black curly haired dead dog on the road, with dark blood poured out of the mouth. I was distressed why the dog was just left there, that no doctor had been called etc. I wanted to examine it closely to see what had happened it, and I said I would be a dog doctor with an ambulance when I grew up. That doctor had belonged to the local paediatrician & Mum took it upon herself to inform her, on her way home after leaving me.

I entered the school wearing a white poodle mask and told my mother to go away and not be embarrassing me, I was grown up enough to cope. The teacher asked me my name, and I invented one on the spot, just for mischief and I thought it would be hilarious hearing her make an eejit of herself. “Foxy, that’s my name” and the poor teacher was calling me by that name half the day until I felt a bit guilty and thought I better tell the truth.

I absolutely hated being surrounded by whingeing kids looking for their mammies. I absolutely despised them and couldn’t understand their distress. I was frustrated too that the teacher didn’t get own to actual teaching as she went around the chaotic classroom. I told the quiet glum boy beside me “I’m bored” and he quipped back “you'd Better get used to it because you’re here for the rest of your life. That reality was abhorrent to me. Next day I was very relieved when we got down to learning. My mother had already given me a great head start with basic literacy, and my father showed me how to read maps and get spatially orientated. When JFK died I knew where America was, tons of miles beyond the west wall of the garden! My father had a huge map of the world in the house, placed in north wall of a room so that I really did grasp the layout of the world around me. Being an only child, my parents could take all their time showing me stuff and how it works, and it made me ultra curious to this day.

igCorcaigh

igCorcaigh wrote: »

Interesting...
Can memories form that young?

I had a random chat with a woman in a bar recently who claimed to remember being in the womb. She didn't seem like the sanest person to be honest.

Interesting overlap! Thats what many people say about me too

dartboardio

I think I was as young as 18 months or two years old I remember a vague image of crawling on the ground through the hallway, we lived in a bungalow at the time. My mam was getting ready to go out and I remember my auntie was coming to visit, and I looked back at the front door and crawled really fast away from it as baby would do messing,

So weird being able to think back to then.

igCorcaigh

Wow, that's a lot of memories for a four year old.

cj maxx

I have memories from hospital, I was about 2 1/2 -3.

igCorcaigh

dartboardio wrote: »

I think I was as young as 18 months or two years old I remember a vague image of crawling on the ground through the hallway, we lived in a bungalow at the time. My mam was getting ready to go out and I remember my auntie was coming to visit, and I looked back at the front door and crawled really fast away from it. So weird being able to think back to being a baby!

Wow! That's very early!

igCorcaigh

cjmc wrote: »

I have memories from hospital, I was about 2 1/2 -3.

How can you put a time on it?
I have very early memories of being in hospital too.

I must ask my parents when was it.
I'm thinking maybe four.

dartboardio

igCorcaigh wrote: »

Wow! That's very early!

That probably explains my excellent memory! Haha

igCorcaigh

igCorcaigh wrote: »

How can you put a time on it?
I have very early memories of being in hospital too.

I must ask my parents when was it.
I'm thinking maybe four.

God now you people say it so do I. I have memories of a nurse putting her mouth cover thing on my before an OP - which of course I hope she changed for the OP - but the only OP I can think of was having my lazy eye straightened. Which must have been what? 2? 3? What age do they normally make that OP?

This thread is messing with my head!

My first Christmas memory is of waking up in the small hours and seeing a miniature piano beside me, unwrapped. I started hitting the keys and was delighted with the sound. Was born in March, so I guess it would have been when I was 1 year10 months. The following Christmas I was given a plastic saxophone, which I loved. Sadly it got broken during Christmas dinner. No, I never became a musician! The Christmas after that I got what I asked for, a toy petrol pump, which my mother had to go to great trouble to find. I adored that thing and used to bring it to Mass and give e everybody petrol into their side during holy communion!

igCorcaigh

This thread is a little bit heartbreaking

cj maxx

igCorcaigh wrote: »

How can you put a time on it?
I have very early memories of being in hospital too.

I must ask my parents when was it.
I'm thinking maybe four.

They can't remember exactly. I hadn't started school , they think about 2-3

Twister2

Losing a toy on a London bus

Was about 4 or 5

igCorcaigh

[Deleted User] wrote: »

God now you people say it so do I. I have memories of a nurse putting her mouth cover thing on my before an OP - which of course I hope she changed for the OP - but the only OP I can think of was having my lazy eye straightened. Which must have been what? 2? 3? What age do they normally make that OP?

This thread is messing with my head!

I went for an operation for a lazy eye too.
I remember the fear of being waken up to go down a dark corridor for x Ray with no one around.

I also remember yorkie Easter eggs.
Possibly late 70s

igCorcaigh

cjmc wrote: »

They can't remember exactly. I hadn't started school , they think about 2-3

I think 2 or 3 could possibly be my early memories too.

I remember being with my mother naked in the shower, I remember her laughing about how I described her nipples as cherries.

igCorcaigh

Twister2 wrote: »

Losing a toy on a London bus

Was about 4 or 5

Getting lost from my parents in a shoe shop in Cork.

Absolute terror.

No idea what age.

igCorcaigh

igCorcaigh wrote: »

Getting lost from my parents in a shoe shop in Cork.

Absolute terror.

No idea what age.

Ah I do this just for kicks these days. My Son is 5. I take him into shops and lose him. Just to see what he will do

igCorcaigh

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Ah I do this just for kicks these days. My Son is 5. I take him into shops and lose him. Just to see what he will do

Oh lol!!
Winner!

Galwayguy35

First day at school Sept 1979, would have been about 4.

Have a few hazy memories before that but that one is the earliest clear memory.