What are your earliest memories?

ScottyMcGee · #1

I thought about them again the other day.

I do have bits and pieces of being in the crib. I remember two girls coming upstairs to visit me and seeing them behind the bars of my crib. My mom often asks me if I remember being a toddler and when I told her that she said we used to be friends with this particular family who'd visit us frequently. We only have one picture left of them lying around.

I remember always finding a way to open the child locks covering the VCR slots. My parents always got frustrated because I'd always want to stick my hand in the VCR slot.

My mom often tells people how I used to frequently escape my crib. While I don't have visual memories of those escapes, I do somehow remember the feeling of gripping the crib and sliding down the legs of the crib like a fireman's pole.

The scale and size of people and things in my earliest memories feel exaggerated since everything appears bigger when you're little. I remember being in a parking garage and looking up at my great-grandfather, thinking he was massive, kind of scary really. I remember leaving my room one day and looking downstairs one day to see a mass of people gathering - which I later understood as my family entering the house to celebrate my birthday.

#2

I remember walking around this school near our first house. I was slow and short and I wasn't thinking, just taking in the area around me. After that I think I cut ahead to being four years old and forgetting how to speak properly, stuck in a Donald Duck voice because "changing my tone back to normal" was a concept far too complicated for me. I stop skipping spaces of time after that.

I am nobody · #3

When I was about three, I tripped at a daycare and smashed my forehead into a Lego on the floor. Ended up having to get stitches, and the moments just before (but not anything after, weirdly) are pretty firmly imprinted on me.

That's about the only thing I can put an approximate age to before kindergarten.

Valigarmander · #4

I remember being babysat by my grandmother along with my cousin from California when I was maybe four years old. My cousin had a big sheet of stickers that she told me not to play with. I did anyway. She cried.

YouTube · #5

I remember breaking my leg when I was 2, & that I could read already when it happened.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"

#6

I have one fleeting memory of my older brother. I enter the kitchen, presumably being carried by my ma, and he's there at the table, eating breakfast with my sister. Means I was two or younger.

smol Kat · #7

My first memory is actually a dream I had. I was maybe about a year and a half??

Anyway, in the dream my mom and I were on a stage and then we got sucked into a church organ. I don't think dream-me was scared, but she was incredibly confused... I'm told that when she was 8 months pregnant with me, my mom got stuck in the orchestra pit at Oregon. Naturally, this was a harrowing experience that somehow imprinted on almost-born me.

ScottyMcGee · #8

The worst is when you can't remember if an early memory was real or just an early dream.

smol Kat · #9

haha, it was so surreal that I knew there was no way it was reality. ...but then there are all those philosophical questions, you know, what is reality? But I don't want to get into that I'm too tired

My first actual memory was playing around with this old af Yamaha keyboard my dad had, me and a childhood friend. And then the friend had to go home. I think I was like 3 or 4.

Apollo the Just · #10

I have little glimpses of memories of being probably about 3. One of them I am positive was a memory, of me touching a fern that wrapped around my finger, and then playing with the My Little Ponies they had set up to entertain young children at this space so their parents could have a small break; but the other memory of interacting with a daycare like place, I can't recall if it was something that actually happened or a dream I had when I was that age that I can still kind of grasp. I think it might have been a dream.

I also remember missing my mom when she dropped me off at my first day of preschool and crying, so she had to come pick me up early. I then felt really guilty the whole car ride home, I remember crying in the car seat on the ride home because I had been missing her and then when she had to pick me up I felt guilty. Vividly remember the view from the back car seat, slightly angled, of the back of my mom's head. Can't remember whether I was guilty because she guilt tripped me or not though but it's something I can definitely imagine happening LOL

Marilink · #11

I have very faint memories of visiting the Lincoln Memorial when I was...3ish. I also have a practically still-frame image of sitting on the floor of our family room while my brother was playing Super Mario World. I remember my Dad bringing in my favorite pillow and pillowcase for Show and Tell in preschool.

Those are the ones that come to the top of my mind right now. Maybe if I think on it, I can bring up a few more.

#12

Do any of you guys remember, like, turning on? As a person? I remember it.

I was three years old. I was standing in front of my dresser, putting pants on. And I distinctly remember thinking to myself, 'this is new. This is a beginning. Hello.' I don't believe I'd had conscious human thought before that. I don't remember anything before the dresser and the pants. Not really.

Apollo the Just · #13

Whoah, that's really interesting, Boo. I don't think I have any memories like that.

Part of me wonders if I am retroactively applying thoughts to old memories, though. Most of my memories from being very young are mostly sensory (sight, touch, etc) with sometimes a strong emotion associated, but I'm not sure if I actually had thoughts at those times or if the thoughts I have when recalling them are something being applied by the older, current me.

Brains are weird.

#14

Like...I mean, I'm not trying to attribute meaning, here. I just...kind of arrived, all at once. I really remember not remembering what came before. It's a kind of a spooky feeling, man.

ScottyMcGee · #15

Boo is really an alien consciousness that one day took over an empty human vessel.

#16

Don't I wish, man.

Deku Tree · #17

I remember being three and a little sick. I meant to announce that I was sick, but I accidentally said I was six, and my family laughed.

ScottyMcGee · #18

One of my friend's earliest memories was being disappointed that he could only experience first-person view. He remembered thinking, "Wow. .. this is it? I can't see like. . the top of my head? This is dumb."

0/10 - would not live again.

DarkZero · #19

my first two snapshot memories are:

- laying on the floor at some dimly lit house with green wallpaper, which i feel like my dad either lived there or someone he knew did. i feel like i was 2
- the cake from my 4th birthday party. it was at my grandma's and it was winnie the pooh themed

my first motion picture memory happened when i was about 3 or 4, we went to see my great-great-grandma in her apartment. i actually remember the living space pretty well, and somehow i also remember spartacus being on the tv.

she had these army men figures that were several inches tall and i asked her about the minesweeper one and she said that minesweepers often end up dying on the job and it really stuck with me, the idea that "people know they could die doing this and they do it anyway"