What is the first memory you have?

Jokerman

I remember going to the Audubon zoo in New Orleans. We went to the Zoo all the time when I was a kid, I was apparently fascinated by Peacocks. I remember we were coming back from the Elephant riding area because that was a thing Zoo's did in the late 80's. I don't remember riding the elephant but I do remember looking out the back seat of my mom's Mitsubishi Starion.

It's weird. Why don't I remember riding the elephant? I only remember the car ride leaving.

Anyways, what's your first memory?

reVerse

Cardboard elf decoration on the window of the fireplace room.

Machwing

My dad holding me in his arms in a room (bathroom?) covered floor-to-ceiling in deep blue tiles. In the room is a large bird cage containing his green winged macaw, Captain. I reach out towards Captain, but my dad pulls my hand back.

I was apparently two years old when we lived in that house and had that bird.

Pinfeldorf

Getting a Denver Broncos jacket like three days before my fourth birthday, and reminding people that, "I'm not four yet, please hold your well wishes."

I also have some vague memories of being hospitalized when I was three for some inner ear issues, but it's just a disconnected series of 2-3 second memories of being wheeled around the hallways on a stretcher, having a thermometer in my butt, and getting gauze wrapped around my head.

Darmak

The earliest thing I can remember is standing in the doorway to my bedroom at night, looking down the hall towards the living room and kitchen where there was a light on. I could hear the TV going and knew my grandparents were still awake. I don't know what woke me up or how I got back to bed, I just remember the darkness of my room and the light in the living room.

I was about 2.5 or 3 years old, and that was the house my grandparents bought in 1986 or 87. I still live there, though the house has changed a lot. My brother and I's old bedroom is now an office, for example, but whenever I sit at my desk and turn my head and look down the hall I still think about that earliest memory sometimes.

sarukun

I think my earliest memory might be a dream I had about He-Man.

Juggernut

Sitting in an old wooden high chair and trying to hold a sandwich on a paper plate like a chef holds a ramekin but it flipped off my hand and landed sandwich side down. For some reason I distinctly remember a ring of mayonnaise splatting out from under the plate.

I have no idea how old I was. Maybe 3?

SirToasty

A little stuffed dog that had a bib tied around it's neck. I named it Puff Puff.

Uriel

All of my early memories are bad like the time I was like 3 and got lost at the Fulton county fair (I think it was at least) and got yelled at by my biological dad because apparently it was my fault

Librarian's ghost

I remember my second birthday cake. It was a 3d biplane my mom made.

Depressperado

my first solid memory, like, one that's not just flashes of images and emotions, is when I was like, 3? I wandered away from my mom while we were at a picnic, and I found a fawn all bedded down waiting for its mom to come back and I touched it and then I ran away because it felt alive.

Etiowsa

Watching the care bears, then being traumatized by Kirstie Alley sweeping in out of nowhere to pick me up and say hi. Had a grudge against her for years after that.

Raijin Quickfoot

This thread

Mortal Sky

The earliest memories I have that I can put a specific window of dates to are from when I'd have been living in the upper Hudson River Valley in New York and picking strawberries, or looking out of our back window at the garden

I'd have been just under two years at that point

Calica

I remember being set down on my mom's bed and watching her unbutton her blouse, and feeling content/satisfied/anticipation because the Not Right thing was about to be made Right. That is, I was hungry and my mom was about to feed me, but I wasn't thinking in those terms quite yet.

I would have been 18 months old, at most.

tynic

Alternate question: What's the most recent (significant) memory you forgot?
Three weeks ago I went to a conference in Holland and 36 hours after arriving I'd completely forgotten what living in america was like. I couldn't even remember where my house is. "Do I go home by ...bus? Is the sea nearby?"

Not sure if it was jetlag or some kind of protective psychological coating.

Zython

Getting up for preschool when I was 4.

Lokarn

My parents took me to a show that they thought I would sleep through as I was something like 3 at the time.

But I have a clear memory (or memory of a memory) of Rik Mayall on stage singing Do you love me, wanna see my bottom!

Apparently I did fall asleep shortly after this but that memory stuck around as the earliest I can remember.

https://youtu.be/r3NiKO8hYBk

My parents did mention a lot of disapproving people around them as they brought a toddler into this show.

TankHammer

I was able to describe with surprising detail watching the renovation of my family's bathroom, which happened when I was only about a year old.
I wasn't even walking yet but I was so fascinated watching the worker cutting tile with a circular saw that it just wedged in there.

I admittedly have a heavily visual-based memory.

Pinfeldorf

tynic wrote: »

Alternate question: What's the most recent (significant) memory you forgot?
Three weeks ago I went to a conference in Holland and 36 hours after arriving I'd completely forgotten what living in america was like. I couldn't even remember where my house is. "Do I go home by ...bus? Is the sea nearby?"

Not sure if it was jetlag or some kind of protective psychological coating.

You mean you weren't jolted back into the mirage of American superiority by gun ads and red hats?

Veevee

First memory? Spoiling for childhood injury and abuse trauma

I was two, at a babysitter playing upstairs unsupervised with their son using a folded up mattress to be launched across a room into a pile of stuffed animals. As I was getting ready for my third or fourth jump my father called for me downstairs, so I jumped towards the door instead of with the mattress. The end of mattress hit my left leg and snapped my femur in half. My father didn't believe I'd been injured that badly and apparently my pain tolerance was remarkably high because I somehow hobbled downstairs where my father put on my snowpants and took me home. It wasn't until I was seen by another adult 36 hours later that I was finally taken to the hospital.

Muzzmuzz

I know I was three when my earliest memories happened. I specifically remember Christmas time because of those 80’s style ornaments, and getting sick from too much Christmas food. I can date it because it was my first house, which we had moved out of by the time I started JK (age 4). I have some memories that could plsusibly be dated earlier, such as the summer, when I was two, such as on our backyard swing, but that ends up hazy.

Which leads to my most concrete dated memory, which my mother being carried on a gurney to the hospital because of (ultimately fatal) anaphylactic shock. That happened in the following January.

I don’t really recall the fallout to that. Don’t remember a funeral or her large extended family being my primary caregivers until my dad met my step mom less than a year later, because I remember waking her up at four in the morning for the next Christmas.

Al_wat

I have a vague memory of being in a townhouse that we lived in when I was very little, but to be honest I have no idea if the memory is real or if I've fabricated it. It might actually be from watching home videos when I was older but still pretty young.

It makes me question sometimes what other memories am I not remembering accurately? If every time I remember a thing from long ago, every time my brain "iterates" the memory, is it changing and I don't realize it.

Prolegomena

I think the earliest is when lumps of coal started exploding in the fireplace and sending little burning embers that singed the carpet and me and my mum had to flee the room. Before I was 4 I think but I can't place it exactly.

Endless_Serpents

Naked save for red wellington boots full of water, I stand in the pond with a bean pole over my head. The pond is my cauldron. The frogs agree. The grimy neighbour’s macaw escapes from the awful shed it was kept in and I laugh hysterically as it flies away.

Depressperado

also when I was 4 or 5, I was having recurring nightmares about a girl trying to get up the rickety wooden stairs of our unfinished basement, before something terrible could get her.

I remember the nightmares, but my mom told me that for several months afterwards, I'd wedge myself in the side of my bed touching the wall, so if she got out of the basement, the girl could hide with me.

bloodyroarxx

Its one of three things im not sure which one was first, I would of been 3-4 at the time so late '89 - early '90

Playing Atari with my Aunt
My parents Wedding
Or getting one of these and playing with it

Tofystedeth

Hmmm not sure since trying to place "first" around that team period is a dicey proposition.

But I think a likely candidate would be this random memory I have of being about 75% up the stairs in the house I grew up in, and two dogs came careening out of my parents bedroom, turn the corner and run past me down the stairs.
It's literally the only memory I have of those two dogs (assuming it's a real memory and not fabricated). The first dog I fully remember was given to us when I was in preschool.

Quantum Tiger

3 years old, climbing all over my dad while he and I argued passionately with my mum that my, as yet unborn, brother should be named Geordie La Forge, if she wasn't going to allow the name Data

BahamutZERO

@Jokerman this thread is fine, but please don't extend it into the make a random thread every day thing.

BahamutZERO

I think my earliest memory is possibly playing with blocks, riding in a stroller on a walk, or crying in a crib at night hoping someone would come keep me company because I was scared of being alone.

Endless_Serpents

My second memory is my sisters climbing on chairs to get a toy box off the top of a cabinet, and I foolishly standing directly between them am cold clocked by it as it’s too heavy for them to carry. It was oval shaped and had a smiling clown face on it. Exactly like this:



Fortunately the head injury did not do any lasting harm and now I must travel between the cracks in reality to speak unto the All-Wyrm.

H0b0man

I think my earliest memory was visiting my grandparents. My granddad answered the door, greeted us, and did that whole "wow you're so big, how old are you now" thing.

I didn't say anything, just held up three fingers.

Darmak

Endless_Serpents wrote: »

My second memory is my sisters climbing on chairs to get a toy box off the top of a cabinet, and I foolishly standing directly between them am cold clocked by it as it’s too heavy for them to carry. It was oval shaped and had a smiling clown face on it. Exactly like this:



Fortunately the head injury did not do any lasting harm and now I must travel between the cracks in reality to speak unto the All-Wyrm.

I remember my grandad built us a big ol wooden toy box to hold a bunch of those toy wood blocks. Some of those were pretty fuckin big and HEAVY, especially for skinny little me. If you dropped one and hit your shin or foot you could expect a hell of a bruise

FCD

I remember waking up in my bed in my old house, then getting up and going into the hallway. I also remember shortly afterwards seeing my dad put a Dustbuster in the kitchen.

Poorochondriac

I recall being placed within a synthetic fiber harness. I was clipped to a thin strand of what I was told was metal, though it was so fine, so imperceptible, that I don't know how it could be true. There were miles of this impossible cable wound around a spool, which was locked into a ratcheted-wheel harness mounted at the edge of the precipice. This housing was the dull grey of simple iron, and I was not comforted for finding it more familiar.

And then I was lowered into the darkness of the oubliette, where the Trials began.

chromdom

I was an itsy bitsy tot, and my parents threw me, naked and screaming, into the public pool. It was very crowded and I distinctly remember, on top of not wanting to swim, I didn't want to be naked in public.
I don't remember it, but I probably made wee-wee in the pool

Strangely, I have no aversion to pools, water, or swimming.

RELtastic

When I was about five, my parents took me out to visit my grandparents in La Habra. They had a swimming pool and a row of orange trees along their back wall.

Early one morning my grandpa woke up early and took me to the back yard, that smelled of chlorine and citrus, where we picked a basket full of oranges (several I threw into the water). Then we went inside to make fresh orange juice. The kitchen smelled like fresh brewed coffee and blueberry muffins.

spono

I can picture a white door set in an off-white or beige building. The building has a large awning, it might be covering the road in front like the way the front of a hotel has the road covered near the door. It’s daytime, overcast. I think I’m outside, but I could be seeing this through the car window. This is the hospital where my brother is about to be born (or maybe has just been born), so I’m three and a half years old.

Rhesus Positive

Going into my childhood home with a red sign in the front garden

My memory has filled in that it was the Sold sign, so I think I was less than two

facetious

The FBI raiding my house with guns drawn when I was 3.

No, this isn't a joke.