The Earliest Childhood Memories Thread!

Butler For Life #1

Everyone's got a few of those memories. Those happy childhood memories, that you can't quite match with a date or time, but you know that they were very early in your life.

Maybe they make you long for simpler times. Maybe they make you nostalgic. Maybe they make you wonder how you ever could have been so silly.

I'll share one of mine, and then you share yours!

I'm not sure if it's my earliest memory, but I distinctly remember a certain day where I was playing outside with BB (I have a lot of memories that begin that way). I was playing with a wiffle ball, tossing it up into the air and trying to see how high I could throw it. I took the ball, bent my knees, and with all the strength I could muster, I sprung up and hurled the ball into the air. I don't remember how high it went. Probably not very far. But I lost the white ball among the clouds for a second before it came down. So naturally, I assumed I had thrown the ball so high it had temporarily gone out of sight range. I was so proud of that. I think I declared that I had broken a ball throwing world record.

Your turn!

Speed Racer

Sitting on my dad's lap while we traded the controller back and forth on the original Super Mario Bros.

Meiz

The earliest memory I have was waking up my brother for fear that if we move we might leave him there and forget to take him along. The second, driving my electric jeep on the way to check out the new house on the same street we were already on.

There's a picture of me raiding the cupboard for crackers but I don't remember that.

What I took from it? Kids are stupid.

PaperLuigi44

One of my earliest memories was looking up at the sky during daytime and seeing the moon, from what little I understood about the moon at that point it fascinated me that I could see it during the day.

#pipe

I was five. Maybe even four.

My brothers are performing at a piano recital for all of the students of their piano teacher. She was a sweet old lady who taught 6 and 7 and 8 year olds how to play for like $3 for a half hour. She had dozens of young students, all performing little etudes in her living room while their families watched on.

I vividly remember playing with two other kids who were too young for lessons, then gorging on egg sandwiches and chocolate cake and orange cordial.

Later I got lessons from her for six months before she died, but I don't remember any of my lessons with her. Only those egg sandwiches and the smell of her living room, sitting on my mum's lap while my brothers played.

Antimatter

i was three

walking, unable to talk
ventured from the living room to the refrigerator

saw a crayola magnet
read the word crayola

recognized it from my crayon box

Morblitz

I don't remember how old I was, but I remember trying to eat my fully posable Gumby toy in the sand pit in my backyard.
And then I think I just ate some sand.

Peccavi

My earliest memory is one of my siblings throwing an iceball at my face. Must have been about 3.

Afterwards I cried. I was a whiny little kid.

Grey Ghost

I was three

I got a leg up on a super low hanging branch of a super tiny tree in our backyard and claimed I had "climbed the tree"

L|ama

walking down the hallway deciding whether I was going to have cornflakes or weetbix for breakfast

2nd earliest: getting in the ol' commodore to move out of that house

Grey Ghost

Antimatter wrote: »

i was three

walking, unable to talk
ventured from the living room to the refrigerator

saw a crayola magnet
read the word crayola

recognized it from my crayon box

You weren't talking by 3?

L|ama

L|ama wrote:

walking down the hallway deciding whether I was going to have cornflakes or weetbix for breakfast

2nd earliest: getting in the ol' commodore to move out of that house

oh uhh i guess it was before I started primary school so I was 4?

Shorty

I have memories from before I could walk

mostly of the family members I liked most

none of them were immediate family members

neville

Butler For Life #1 wrote:

Everyone's got a few of those memories. Those happy childhood memories, that you can't quite match with a date or time, but you know that they were very early in your life.

Maybe they make you long for simpler times. Maybe they make you nostalgic. Maybe they make you wonder how you ever could have been so silly.

I'll share one of mine, and then you share yours!

I'm not sure if it's my earliest memory, but I distinctly remember a certain day where I was playing outside with BB (I have a lot of memories that begin that way). I was playing with a wiffle ball, tossing it up into the air and trying to see how high I could throw it. I took the ball, bent my knees, and with all the strength I could muster, I sprung up and hurled the ball into the air. I don't remember how high it went. Probably not very far. But I lost the white ball among the clouds for a second before it came down. So naturally, I assumed I had thrown the ball so high it had temporarily gone out of sight range. I was so proud of that. I think I declared that I had broken a ball throwing world record.

Your turn!

does he look like a bug

Antimatter

Grey Ghost wrote:

Antimatter wrote: »

i was three

walking, unable to talk
ventured from the living room to the refrigerator

saw a crayola magnet
read the word crayola

recognized it from my crayon box

You weren't talking by 3?

either i wasn't talking by three

or that memory is even earlier than i thought

all i now is i was apparently reading at a much earlier age than everyone else

recognized the word mcdonalds on a pizza vendor, when my dad thought i was looking at the actual burger chain sign

also, one of my first words was phytoplankton thanks to the magic school bus

i was apparently reading at above the fourth grade level in kindergarten, and could read at a college level in third grade

Dichotomy

three years old
watching the road from a second-storey window
waiting for my father and sister to get back from picking up the new puppy

that dog's been dead for like seven years now

SanderJK

I remember playing with my Aunts dog at my grandparents house, and that dog died when I was 4. I also remember finding it's name silly, because it was called "Little Bear" even though it was a little dog. (a longhaired dachshund)

In general, there are many things I remember that happened before I was 10 years old, but I would be very hard pressed to put a date on it.

End

This doesn't exactly count as happy, but I remember, when I was around 4, sitting on a red ant pile.

I really liked watching them, but the ants did not like that at all, so I ended up getting bitten and stung a lot.

Seriously

I feel like I remember being in my crib, trying to climb it, falling out. I cracked my head on the floor

I definitely remember trying to ride our dog like a horse, and it letting me get good and settled before it bucked me off. I cracked my head on some cinderblocks


I guess I hit my head a lot

Grey Ghost

Anti that's impressive!

The first full-length real-life book I can remember reading was fucking Jurassic Park

Even if I did have to skip all the pages about gene sequencing because I had literally no idea what it was about

miscellaneousinsanity

My family moved from Hong Kong when I was 4 but I still have some memories of the place.
I remember my first elevator ride, I think, that might be one of my earliest memories. I remember my first bike ride, with training wheels. We had a pretty long, steep driveway. My first word was 'duck'.
Apparently what I'm not remembering is anything remotely interesting

Dichotomy

I read the Fellowship Of The Ring in grade 1

and then grew up into this

satansfingers

i remember some pretty scarring but nonsensical dreams from when i was 3-4

the oldest non-dream memory i have is from when we moved when i was 5. my brother and i sat on the back of the moving truck while my parents were unloading stuff and a black cat from the neighborhood came over and we pet it for a while. we named it blackie because we were not good at naming things.

Antimatter

i remember reading predator: concrete jungle in sixth grade

it literally had at least one f bomb on every page

BugBoy

I remember not l

Jintor

I don't know if it's my earliest, but I remember being told to stand in the corner by one of the older nanny ladies that mother liked to drop me off at while mum and dad went to work back in the days when they both had jobs. Would have been, I dunno, 3 or 4. Not going to official preschool yet.

I remmeber going to primary school, kindergarden, the first day. Posing on our front balcony, so proud with my hat and bag. Would have been 4, I think.

miscellaneousinsanity

let's see what else, school memories!
in hong kong they have you starting school at like age 3 or 4
the chinese schools are more rigorous while the british ones were more like kindergarten/pre-K
whenever it was someone's birthday they'd get a small plush toy (maybe like a fish or a bear?)
the floor was at least partially that blue linoleum stuff with the raised circular texture, i remember one time after it rained that the floor would make that awful squeaking noise when stepped on, still to this day my most hated sound
when we got through the year we had a little 'graduation ceremony' with robes and certificates and everything

Isoldae

Which brother is the best brother?

BFL #1 or BB?

End

hm, I thought of another memory, probably when I was around 4 as well

I remember being sick, and having really bizarre dreams. I think we went to the hospital, and they gave me juice to drink, and I thought it was great because my parents never let me drink juice.

I had a very juiceless childhood

Rogue Lemon

I wanted to go to the park across the street to play, about 5 years old. My dad sat me down on the couch with my sister, now just old enough to walk a bit.

"You can take her out to play with you, but you have to be a good big brother and take care of her."
"Okaaaaaay..."
He nods, and kind of leans down in front of me.
"Good. And what are you going to do if someone is picking on her?"

I decided to demonstrate. I thrust my arm forward in a tiny little balled fist... and smashed it into his nose with my childlike lack of restraint. Instantly, there's blood all over his shirt, on mine, on the couch. I must have hit him just right, because there was a fucking SPRAY of it. He kind of reeled back and started swearing up a storm. Mom heard him and came running in, seeing blood all over me screaming "What the HELL did you DO!?" at my dad of all people, while he just kind of feebly points at me with a look on his face like 'are you fucking kidding me?' At this point, the fear has registered in my brain, and I'm afraid dad is going to kill me, so I ran out of the house, covered in my father's blood. I dashed across the street (nearly getting hit by a car) to the park, and tried to pretend like nothing happened. The kids over at the sand box freaked out, and their parents tried to help me by asking if I was hurt, or troubled, where I lived, ANYTHING. I finally told them them that I lived nearby, but I didn't want to go home because dad would be SUPER mad at me. Naturally, these people jumped to the conclusion that I was some sort of victim of abuse escaped from a child-dungeon. My mom showed up a couple of minutes later and then proceed to argue with this woman and her husband for the better part of 10 minutes, trying to convince them that I kicked my dad's ass, not the other way around. Somehow, she eventually conceded. I don't really know what was said because, FUCK THAT, I had swings to play on and I could TOTALLY jump off farther than some stupid girl could.

(I didn't get in trouble, dad realized it was an accident. But my mom could not completely get the blood out of my favorite ninja turtles shirt.)

TrippyJing

I remember I was so proud when I started using a regular cup instead of my sippy cup.

Xehalus

I remember being 4 and watching the family dog jump over our fence, never to be seen again.

Meiz

Xehalus wrote:

I remember being 4 and watching the family dog jump over our fence, never to be seen again.

Jesus. Well lets say he ... :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgGKSjiw0HQ

So you don't feel so terrible.

MetroidZoid

I remember playing with our Great Pyrenees in our small suburban backyard. Things like getting a football, and running away while Bear would 'tackle' me (in reality, stopping just short of running me over, and nudging me until I forked over the ball. Then he'd run away with it, drop it and wait for me to take it and go to the other side, rinse and repeat). And also laying on him for naps (me and a cat named Vanity). He was our best bed. Pretty much anything with Bear just following me around because he was the best dog.

Dys

I can't really remember too many specific stories from my earliest years, only a few vague images.

Melding

Falling into a pool with the cover on. almost dying until i was saved by my father.

ten seconds longer and i would be here making this post. So you have someone to blame.

Dichotomy

now this is secondhand

but my mother claims that after being told I couldn't play outside I somehow managed to lock her in the laundry room (it had a childproof doorknob) and then went out to play anyways

she was stuck in there until my father got home several hours later

Butler

I remember being in a pram being pushed by my Mum. It was raining really hard so she'd put the rain cover over it, which was this sheet of clear plastic with lots of tiny holes in it that let air in but not rain. I was snuggled in under a blanket while she ran at full pelt to get us back to the house, while I thought to myself the baby equivalent of "Aww yeah this ride is sick.

Butler

Ahahaha Dich that's amazing.

BusterK

I know intellectually it's impossible but the first thing I can remember I thought for a long time was being born. I remember a flash of black, floating, nothing before that.
And then a rush of movement, and then light and noise and a bunch if shapes I couldn't distinguish. It must be another memory. It might be from when I went down the outdoor tricycle when I was three and that I still have the scar for but I don't remember it happening. I certainly don't remember any pain in the memory I associated with being born.

Bedigunz

My first memory was when I fell out of a moving car when I was 3 years old.

This was the 80s so child seats and child locks weren't legally required in cars.