What is Your Earliest Memory?

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mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,610
mawn, I can understand how b&w TV might implant a b&w view of the world. We didn't have TV yet at that first house, however perhaps I had seen b&w movies and/or cartoons in the theater, and that distinction played out in my dreams.

I distinctly remember radio music from that era, so Big Band music was a distinct memory from the past when I encountered it later, plus it was revived somewhat on TV and by old vaudevillians who appeared and performed a lot on TV variety shows.
 

mawnansmiff

Lifer
Oct 14, 2015
7,680
8,269
Sunny Cornwall, UK.
Another tale, relating to my first day at nursery school, apparently they had one of those pressed steel pedal cars (made by Triang I think) and I loved it.

I must have loved it a lot as apparently when Mother came to pick me up for home I refused to get out of it. The reason? I had err, ahem, soiled my shorts :eek:....or so the story goes :rolleyes:.

Regards,

Jay.
 
Feb 21, 2023
23
103
I can remember collecting my sister from hospital when she was born. That puts me at two and a half.
Same for me but I was 14 months old when we picked up my new sister!
I can clearly remember knocking down a standard lamp in the hospital day room while my father and I were there,when I mentioned this incident years later to my mum she said I couldn't possibly remember that as I was only a one year old,but I can still see the whole thing in my mind clearly.I could hardly tell you what I done last Friday but I remember this!!
 

mawnansmiff

Lifer
Oct 14, 2015
7,680
8,269
Sunny Cornwall, UK.
I recall aged about 6, I was looking for Mother but couldn't find her. Back then we lived in a huge rambling old farmhouse with many rooms. I went from room to room and nothing so went upstairs and did the same.

I eventually found her sat in the nursery room feeding my newborn sister. This was quite a shock and a surprise to me. I pointed to where my sister was sucking away and said "mummy, what's that"? I can't recall what she said but I said "I'm going to call it a trumpet" and off I skipped on my merry way :LOL:.

Regards,

Jay.
 

Merton

Lifer
Jul 8, 2020
1,039
2,786
Boston, Massachusetts
I have a memory of about three years old and wearing my grandfather's fedora and getting my head stuck between the rails of our back porch. It is also sort of a family joke as all the men of our clan have large (sometimes empty) noggins.
Jay, there are people who have a peculiar condition in which they remember details of every day of their lives. The actress Marylu Henner is one such person. In am happy not to be one such...
interesting topic
 

crusader

Can't Leave
Aug 18, 2014
399
362
Nebraska
The one I can nail down, I was about five. I wrote a letter to Michael Jackson after seeing Thriller on MTV. I asked him if the zombies were really a million yrs old 🤣.
My baby sitter was watching me at the time when I asked to write the letter. The next day, my mom was pissed. When I was a lot older, my mom told me the story.

Turns out, the babysitter fished through the desk and gave me my mom's birth certificate to write the letter!
 

woodsroad

Lifer
Oct 10, 2013
12,691
20,372
SE PA USA
My cousin, ten years older than me, remembers a lot more about my childhood than I do. He remembers my parents before they were married. He was five years old when they got married. He lives on the other side of the country now, and it's always great to talk with him on the phone. He reminds me of things that I have long since forgotten. Since I am the sole survivor of my immediate family, he is my long-term family memory.

Here's one other memory that came back to me years later:

DAN 1969 SHENANDOAH S.jpg
IN 1969, my family took a vacation at the end of the summer. We went to Williamsburg, then down the Skyline Drive. When we got near to Staunton, VA the road was blocked. Hurricane Camille had passed through, flooded the valley, and backed up all the sewer systems. I was sorely disappointed we couldn't drive further, since the thought of thousands of backed up toilets was a sight that any six year old boy would give their best Tonka toy to see. As a consolation prize, my father took this picture of me, standing on the stone wall of the Skyline Drive, with the valleys below. I felt special.

Skip ahead thirty years and one of my best friends is a guy who grew up in that valley. He looked at this photo and knew not only exactly where I was standing, but where he was that day: directly behind me, in that valley, riding around with his mother and her boyfriend, surveying the flood damage. The only reason that i remembered that day was because of the backed up toilets. My friend remembered it because so many people in his town had been killed and so many more left homeless. And that his mother's boyfriend was looting houses that had been in the flood's path. His mother cried in the car as he went into a destroyed home and brought out a crystal chandelier. They didn't stay together long after that day.

Such a beautiful day, I'm a happy kid. In the valley below is death, destruction and tears.
 

renfield

Lifer
Oct 16, 2011
5,126
41,662
Kansas
I remember the apartment my parents had when I was 1 1/2- 2. It was the 2nd floor of an old Victorian house with cool stained glass windows. I also remembered a restaurant my parents took me to at about that same time. It had a unique stone step at the entrance I can still remember.
 

krizzose

Lifer
Feb 13, 2013
3,357
20,834
Michigan
These are all misty of course and hard to place one before the others, but it’s one of the below:

Being given a bottle; I must have been in a high chair, as I remember being generally upright.

Seeing trees go by from the inside of a car, but looking up, so not sitting up. Pwrhaps as a very young toddler in a crib/car seat (it would have the mid 70s, so whatever kids were strapped into).

Much more distinct is of having my mom putting my shoes on. Again, I must have been a toddler, because I was sitting up on a couch. I distinctly remember that my legs were straight, and barely made it to the seat edge. Navy blue with white soles.
 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,610
When I was three or four, my folks and sister and I were visiting my mother's parents and I was put down for a nap in a room upstairs with the screened window open and the roller shade flapping gently in the breeze. I heard the mourning dove calling again and again. That's still among my favorite bird calls. That may be why blues music often sounds cheerful to me.

Drunk on nostalgia we are. Getting in shape for St. Patrick's Day, ready for the singing of Danny Boy.
 

WVOldFart

Lifer
Sep 1, 2021
2,238
5,254
Eastern panhandle, WV
My first memory was walking down our dirt road with my mother to my Grandparents place after my Grandmother came home from the hospital after a cerebral hemorrhage. I was 3 years old. My Grandmother was never healthy after that so I never knew my maternal Grandmother when she was a vibrant, fun loving, productive woman. I was always sorry that I missed her in her prime.
 

mawnansmiff

Lifer
Oct 14, 2015
7,680
8,269
Sunny Cornwall, UK.
I had another remembrance, again from when I was about 6 years old. I had a friend that lived down the hill from me called Rachel Salmon, she was roughly the same age. We were doing the "you show me yours and I'll show you mine" thing (do kids do that in America?).

She was pretty reluctant at first but finally relented. She pulled up her dress and pulled down her knickers.....I had a good look and was rather disappointed thinking my sister has one of those. Anyway, after a moment she pulled her knickers back up and straightened out her frock.

She then reminded me it was my turn but I kept saying no. She started squawking and shouting so I did the honourable thing ( :rolleyes: ) and lowered my short trousers and pulled down my pants....just as Rachel's father appeared from the back door!

He virtually dragged me all the way home by my ear.....and only let go when my father opened the door!

I got a hell of a telling off for that little caper and was banned from visiting the salmon family (there were loads of them) ever again :confused:.

Regards,

Jay.