What are your earliest memories?

Rubberlegs · 31-10-2019 12:13AM

4Ad wrote: »

Brilliant vivid post.. Forgotten them magazines..

Still read them today, it was the startings of a lifelong interest in murder

I can remember locking my mother out of the house and her speaking in very measured tones at me through the letter box telling me where her keys were. I asked her was I in trouble first and when she said no I got the keys and posted them out to her. She gave out yards to me when she came in

I choked on a lemon sherbet sweet, it was wedged and I couldn't breathe, only point at my throat. My Dad turned me upside down and whacked me in the back and it shot out and landed on the cooker. I cried because he hit me.
I stuck a fake lizard type thing on a wall in the house and forgot about it. I screamed the house down when I found it again, I thought it was real.
Scraping the toes of my shoes along the ground to annoy my mother. Sometimes I look back and wonder how they kept me at all, lol.

DutchGold98 · 31-10-2019 12:20AM

I remember saying "I'm three" with pride, and my older brother saying "I'm SIX" !!!

I also remember a lot of playschool days, I was 4 then.

Elemonator · 31-10-2019 12:28AM

My earliest memory is when I was in Las Vegas with the fam visiting some theme parks. Got back to the hotel and my parents were at the desk talking to the receptionist. My brother who was a baby at the time and just under a year old began to slide out of the buggy and start pulling things out from underneath it. Parents were very upset.

I was 2 years, 9 months old! Mental.

31-10-2019 12:34AM

My father bringing back a statue from Belguim. A boy taking a leak. I was almost 2.

Holidays in Garryvoe when I was 2. My sister (1) getting freaked out by the holy pictures and screaming every night. Being tickled by two grandads - mine and my cousins' grandad who I never met again.

Sitting on the carpet watching our black and white telly when footage of the Dublin bombings aftermath were on the news. Must have been a news flash c.7.00pm as I would have been in bed at 9.00pm.

My father agreeing to mind my uncle's greyhound for 2 weeks while the latter was on holiday. The dog was killed on the road after a couple of days. I was about 2 and a half.

Getting lost in Dunnes Stores, Salthill on holiday summer of 1975. Aged 3 and a half. An old woman scolding my mother for not watching me.

Telling a Guard "I'm 3" when he called next door to tell my neighbour that her eldest son (9) had been knocked down by a car. She was minding me for the afternoon. He survived.

JupiterKid · 31-10-2019 12:42AM

I have many, many memories of my very early childhood and things that happened.

Sitting in my baby chair being spoon fed “look at the airplane coming in to land!” - I was probably only 2 years of age or less, so late 1970s.
Getting our family dog - a golden retriever - at Heuston train station when I was about 3. I was in a stroller buggy. I vividly recall the dog crying and scrabbling at the wire mesh in the crate she arrived in.

Being in playschool, aged 3 to 4 - playing with crayons, finger painting, learning the alphabet, playing with mala.

Aged about 4 and a half, my mum changing my clothes in front of the TV in the living room with Sesame Street (loved that show as a child!) on and being very embarrassed as I thought Big Bird, Grover and the others could see me undressing from the TV!, lol

Having a birthday party in McDonalds, aged about 5.

branie2 · 31-10-2019 12:43AM

The time my sister was born.
Christmas when I was 3. I got a cowboy suit, hat and toy rifle

Cee-Jay-Cee · 31-10-2019 12:50AM

I have a very vivid memory of my granda from when I was 18 months old. He was sick in bed and my mum took me and my sister up to see him. I remember him clearly talking to me and giving me money (it was an old green £1 note) My mum remembers the day too and it was me that asked her about it and not her asking me and me dreaming up a memory. He died in 1972 before my second birthday.

I have several earlier memories too from the first house I lived in. I remember playing in the back garden on a hot sunny day. I also remember seeing a digger working in the field behind the house and thinking it must have been my dad as he was away at work and so that must have been him.

I also remember being outside and finding a dead crow and running into the house scared and crying. My mum also remembers this. She says I was around 14 months old at that time.

I have several other memories some of which may be when I was even younger than 14 months old.

I also have countless memories of moving into our new house when i was 20 months old and hundreds of memories from when I was 3 and 4 and starting school.

My twin sister can barely remember yesterday and is amazed I have so many memories from when we were so young.

andekwarhola · 31-10-2019 12:52AM

harry Bailey esq wrote: »

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 .

Can't possibly imagine how that could be the case

branie2 · 31-10-2019 12:58AM

Cee-Jay-Cee wrote: »

I have a very vivid memory of my granda from when I was 18 months old. He was sick in bed and my mum took me and my sister up to see him. I remember him clearly talking to me and giving me money (it was an old green £1 note) My mum remembers the day too and it was me that asked her about it and not her asking me and me dreaming up a memory. He died in 1972 before my second birthday.

I have several earlier memories too from the first house I lived in. I remember playing in the back garden on a hot sunny day. I also remember seeing a digger working in the field behind the house and thinking it must have been my dad as he was away at work and so that must have been him.

I also remember being outside and finding a dead crow and running into the house scared and crying. My mum also remembers this. She says I was around 14 months old at that time.

I have several other memories some of which may be when I was even younger than 14 months old.

I also have countless memories of moving into our new house when i was 20 months old and hundreds of memories from when I was 3 and 4 and starting school.

My twin sister can barely remember yesterday and is amazed I have so many memories from when we were so young.

Amazing memory you have there

gozunda · 31-10-2019 01:03AM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Do you mean that when you remember something from childhood that you can't recall how you felt at that time? Do most people tend to remember the feelings?

My earliest memory is from about the age of 3 1/2 and I don't know how I felt during that time. At all.

I do. A very early memory sleeping in a cot been told by my mother that I had to stay there in baby language and feeling very annoyed that I was being talked to that way

Not only feelings but entire conversations as well - not saying I understood what was being said at the time - but that didnt stop me from remembering actual conversations such as...

In the cot listening to the parents hanky panky and being able to remember what was said word for word - they evidently didn't realise the baby was listening.

Having a philosophical discussion with my brother when I was about 2 about what getting older meant and whether people really aged or we just stayed the same

Being able to remember the layout of houses I had visited including details of rooms etc even when a very small child.

That said I did fall on my head a good few times as a kid and have the scars to prove it ...

o1s1n · 31-10-2019 01:18AM

When you remember something, you're not actually remembering the event but instead recalling the last time you remembered it.

Always thought that was a bit of a brain melter. Shows you how easily memories get distorted over time.

I have dreams that sometimes reference other reoccurring dreams. Like a whole other life lived in dreams.

I wake up a bit confused for a second not knowing which part was a dream and which part was a memory.

Was convinced this morning when I woke up for a few seconds that I'd been dreaming about the apartment I owned in bray.

Then realised I'd actually been dreaming about an apartment I owned in bray in a previous dream.

...

After rereading the above I may need to check myself in somewhere

1800_Ladladlad · 31-10-2019 01:19AM

I was asked to get into a white van.

dartboardio · 31-10-2019 01:24AM

Also have a distant memory of being in creche, sitting around, eating soggy biscuits and drinking juice from coloured cups. Then shaking those weird mexican shaker things at 'music time'

Also one or two memories from junior infants and the jigsaws we used to do once a week, I would absolutely love to be able to see those jigsaws again as the memory is fading.

Memories of my grandad teaching me how to use cutlery

Happy memories from being a child also when my grandad would collect me everyday from school and I'd go home to watch Matilda in his living room while he made dinner. Eating mints and singing funny songs while he'd say 'upp over the jumps' as we'd go over the bumps in the road.

Ah :') lol.

Plumbthedepths · 31-10-2019 01:32AM

Being honest one of my earliest memories was getting hit for scribbling with my left hand during my first few days in school. 3 year olds don't write they scribble.
Amazing that people thought repeated beatings could change the dominant handness of a child.
I also remember chasing a priest away from my grandmother's house, reason eludes me but probably some association with black and white. Stones in the hands of a four year old can be persuasive.
Although some fun memories too. Again around 3 years old I watched in fascination as my older brother who fancied himself as an electrician at the time ( he was six) try to wire a lamp, he plugged it in and was thrown across the room, I still remember having to get changed after wetting myself laughing ( btw he is an electrician now, quite successful aswell).
I remember visiting my greatgrandmother the night she died, she was a little white lady in her bed. It was all the candles burning I think that made it stick in my mind. I didn't understand why everyone was crying but I started to cry too. I only know my age because I once recounted my memory to my Mum, she didn't believe me as she said I was only gone a year old.
Happily I have alot of fun and good memories opposed to bad and it is fun to revisit them by times.
Poignant but very comforting thread. Thanks OP.
Going to delete my first post as it's not appropriate to other people's memories and it could be seen as disrespectful.

storker · 31-10-2019 01:34AM

Being Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in Junior/Senior infants. "Get up Lazarus," I said and by golly up he got. I never did find out what happened to my Oscar nomination.

A parrafin heater in the hall that looked like a miniature pillar box.

The Vietnam and Yom Kippur wars on the news.

Breaking my little brother's toy guitar that he got from Santa's Magic Chimney in Switzer's. That one's not really a memory but he's reminded me of it enough times since...

JupiterKid · 31-10-2019 01:51AM

Galwayguy35 wrote: »

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.

Snap!

I also started school - low babies in kindergarten - aged 4.5 in Sept 1979. I even have a photo of myself on that first day that my sister scanned to digital format.

FluffyTowel · 31-10-2019 03:14AM

Memories are funny auld things. We moved house when I was just gone 5, and thinking about it, I can remember the front and back garden clearly, but almost nothing about the inside. Lots of memories of playing outside though on the street. We had one hot summer when the tarmac was melting on the ground, and I had like the coolest bike ever with a big long saddle for giving backers.

One of the weirdly clearest memories is going around the block with my dad and meeting a lady who, for some reason, I was convinced would be my primary school teacher (so I would have been in my early 4s). I told EVERYBODY about it.

I remember dropping a paving stone on my head and bawling, and my mum gave me my soother even though my neighbour was there. That was when I was 3, and it's the soother thing that sticks out as I was being (with difficulty!) weaned off it, and only got it at night time and certainly never in public.

There was also a turtle in my play school, a plastic slide, and a girl with really curly hair, who would bite you sometimes for no reason.

Good times!

31-10-2019 11:56AM

I was a complete tomboy as a kid, right from the start. Dolls literally got thrown out the window, to my patents’ consternation. They had to ensure any presents I got were “boys’” toys. Guns, cars, petrol pumps, airfix planes. Few people could grasp the concept of a little blond girl hating most things that little girls were supposed to live. Maybe it was because I had boys only households either side of me, and saw myself as one of them, but I think it was simply inborn. I was literally born a feminist in that I quite frankly didn’t see much difference between the genders.

I loved talking to men, and would try and follow them everywhere, even twice running into men’s toilets! I was a fast little runner when very young, however that didn’t last! Had my mother at her wits end. I would have been a paedophiles dream in that I would be easily lured by a man, however I generally refused for anyone to see me naked except my mother and likely would have bitten anyone who tried anything on!! Fortunately the men “I chatted up” were more often very embarrassed when I would hop over and sit beside them on a bus. She did tell me about dangerous men lurking in the local park, I knew they existed but I was more fascinated by the danger than afraid.

When I became a teenager I was all-girl, except that I was still the feminist I had been from earliest memory.

El Tarangu · 01-11-2019 01:10PM

I think I remember our family getting our first television, when I would have been two.

My first distinct memory when I was 3, when I thought I had found a snake in the sand pit in our back garden. I was absolutely terrified, and I remember that the sky was overcast, and how damp the sand was.

Spoiler: it wasn't a snake, only a large-ish slug. I was so young that I never encountered one before and was unfamiliar with the concept, and my had to explain to me that it was just a snail without a shell.

Sleepy · 01-11-2019 01:14PM

My earliest memory is of climbing around on the pews during my sister's christening while my aunt was trying to grab a hold of me and my older cousins were egging me on. I'd have been about a month shy of my 2nd birthday.

Graces7 · 01-11-2019 01:24PM

We moved house when I was three so a very clear timeline!

Before; sitting in a tin bath in front of a roaring fire. Had my doll in with me! It was a back street terrace and the back door was always open to neighbours and relatives.

They were 2 up 2 down houses with no bathrooms, outside toilets and the only water supply was the scullery, so we all had a set of 3 tin baths. Little bigger and big. Else you washed in the scullery

During and just after the war so family was very precious.... in the local park with my brother, and following him to school!

Before the move, to a brand new build, we visited the road, Our house to be was half built and there were other girls jumping off onto sand piles...They were bigger than me!

The day of the move; they had to lower my parents' bed out of the top window as it would not go down the stairs. Very unsettling that was. We had a cat and they tried to put it into the car but it was not having any and flew at my brother before vanishing..

Aceandstuff · 01-11-2019 01:40PM

donspeekinglesh wrote: »

All my memories are like that, minus the image - I have aphantasia. I may also have SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory), my first definite memory is when I was 7 and I can't remember anything for a few years after. None of my memories have feelings attached, I can remember that certain things happened, or I did things etc, but the act of remembering doesn't bring any feelings with it.

This sounds like my brother. I don't really understand it, but he claims to have had "no conscious thoughts" before the age of 5 or 6, and barely remembers any of his childhood.

I'm very much the opposite. I was talking to my mother about two years ago about what I remembered from our first house, which we left when I was three years old. I could tell her the exact layout of the house, inside and out, the names of the neighbours and their dogs, people who used to come and visit, etc. I asked her about a few odd incidents that I remembered, the windows getting broken and repaired, going to my cousin's office, and some guests we had from England, among a few other things. I was able to describe pictures hanging in the bathroom that she took down when I was about 18 months old, and random things she had donated to charities in the area. (I wanted those walkie-talkies!)

As I described a few more incidents that she seemed to recall, she started trying to calculate exactly how far back I could remember. Whatever my first memory is, it is from before I was 10 months old.

evil_seed · 01-11-2019 01:41PM

Sitting on my granddad's lap and pulling the hairs on his arm. Very vivid memory. I must've been 2 or 3

Tammy! · 01-11-2019 02:26PM

I remember running around with a balloon on a string at some races that we went too. My parents confirmed that we did go to the races when I was 2 so that is a genuine memory.

And when I was 2/2 and a half, my granda was dying so my dad was painting the spare room for him because he needed his own room. My dad gave me some tea set ornaments to play with and keep me occupied. I just remember playing with them. I don't remember my granny coming home and going mad because I was let play with them which she did

Bobblehats · 01-11-2019 02:36PM

Sliding down a hill into a big puggle!

In my tiny toddler mind, it was a vast resoirvoir which seemed to take forever to descend into from a mighty peak but on reflection probably not.

Lollipops23 · 01-11-2019 02:39PM

Being in my highchair in the living room of our house, my dad was on the sofa watching telly and my mam bringing me a bowl of something. I recounted it to her years later and she said that's exactly where she used to feed me my tea (there's no photos of it so defo didn't pick it up there). She reckons I was around 18 months.

1o059k7ewrqj3n · 01-11-2019 02:50PM

I think I know what my earliest memory is, but I try not to think about it too often. I’ll explain why.

It was the first time I experienced snow. My mum brought me out to the front garden and we played in the snow. There wasn’t much, but enough maybe to roll a snowball up. It had fallen that morning. Was very cold.

Sally Mann wrote a book about memory and photography. In it, she writes:

Sally Mann wrote:

Whatever of my memories hadn’t crumbled into dust must surely by now have been altered by the passage of time. I tend to agree with the theory that if you want to keep a memory pristine, you must not call upon it too often, for each time it is revisited, you alter it irrevocably, remembering not the original impression left by experience but the last time you recalled it. With tiny differences creeping in at each cycle, the exercise of our memory does not bring us closer to the past but draws us farther away.

Memory changes, often as a result of the where we are in life, how we feel as we look back into the past. That memory of playing in the snow is especially poignant for me now because my mum is gone, and I am the only keeper of the moment. I feel sad looking back on it now, but I guess it’s a good sadness. I try not to think about it too much, I want to keep the memory just right, not tinged with sadness and regret, but a happy moment.

Ger Roe · 01-11-2019 03:21PM

Deleted User wrote: »

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.

I remember those days too. The airport was a magic place and the viewing balcony on the roof gave perfect views of the state of the art craft that passed through. As far as I remember, the viewing rooftop was closed in the 70's when 'the troubles' arose. With all the aircraft noise blasting directly at you on the rooftop, I doubt it would be allowed these days anyway. It was always a special occasion to go there and wave people off. I also remember the small museum display at the airport with 'Iolar' (DeHaviland Dragon)hanging from the roof, a cutaway jet cockpit that you could sit in and a small glass magnifier globe with Ireland's piece of moon rock, brought back to us by the Apollo 11 astronauts. I heard recently that it was lost forever in a fire at Dunsink observatory?

I was six when the first Aer Lingus 747 (Jumbo) flew in from the Boeing factory and I remember the crowds that turned up at the airport to see the green monster land. The army number one band played it in and it did a lap around the airport at low speed and altitude so everyone could get a good look at Ireland's latest achievement. It felt like the country was taking it's place in the modern age.

Look up.... it's Aer Lingus...:)

r93kaey5p2izun · 01-11-2019 03:35PM

I'm not sure on timelines. I have lots of clear memories of playschool, which I attended from age 3 to 4. I remember sitting bawling my eyes out on a metal fire escape stairs outside the building on the first day.

I remember the fear and upset of my mother telling me she was going to leave my Dad and move back in with her sisters, and begging her not to leave me behind. I was probably just gone 3.

I have a fleeting image of being in a wooden cradle and a tie being tied on to the bars at the side to rock it when I woke in the night. I would have been under 18 months to be in that cradle, so I don't know if that's real or not.

What are your earliest memories?

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