NationStates Jolt Archive

I've been curious for some time now as to what people's earliest childhood memories are and, especially, how far back they go.


Mine is of my third birthday. There's another one that feels like it could have been some time before that, but I'm not sure.
The subject matter is a bit of a downer, so to start the thread on a happy note :) I'll spare you for now.



Oh, and poll coming up. I hope.

I remember it quite clearly... I was four years old and this mean man grabbed my arm. Then Chuck Norris appeared out of thin air and round house kicked the mean man in the face and killed him. He then gave me a piggy back ride and returned me to my mommy.

I remember it quite clearly... I was four years old and this mean man grabbed my arm. Then Chuck Norris appeared out of thin air and round house kicked the mean man in the face and killed him. He then gave me a piggy back ride and returned me to my mommy.

Is there anything Chuck Norris can't do?! :p

Uhh I kinda had an event that made me forget anything before that point... ^^ So I am gonna say 6...

I was probably about 8 months old, and my parents had set me on the couch to go do something, when the dog (a brown lab) came over and started sniffing me. Labs might not seem all that frightening, but when you are that small and staring at the business end of those fangs, you would be soiling yourself too. I was petrified and started wailing. The lab didn't exactly help out; when she heard me start crying, she responded by licking me. I got a mouthful of dog slobber, which only compounded my fear and terror because now I was having trouble breathing.

While I eventually made friends with the dog, she still scared the bejeesus out of me until I was a young toddler.

Uhh I kinda had an event that made me forget anything before that point...

:eek: Lobotomy? ;)

I was probably about 8 months old,....

Wow, and I thought the "under 1 year" option was just gratitious nonsense. Well, live and learn.

:eek: Lobotomy? ;)

AHhhhh NO... as I am still here and that makes me crazier not more in the middle ^^

fuck knows. before i was about 10 is all pretty damn hazy... just bits and bobs here and there, really. no real order to the memories. i think the first one might be something to do with a toy gun, but i really don't know. i remember playing cricket with some kids from school when i probably about 6 or 7, so i'll have to go with that :(

i have a shit memory.


edit: ooh i just remembered something from when i was 5 (maybe 6)... a friend's teenage mutant ninja turtles-themed birthday party... thanks RB!

being in an oxygen tent after having an asthma attack when i was 2 or 3. havent had one since

My oldest memory: flushing my friend's Batman-head-thing (a Batman head with candy in it) down the toilet, because he was pissing me off. I ended up clogging up the toilet, and I got one hell of a spanking. I was about two or three.

Ah, good times, good times. :D

Wow, and I thought the "under 1 year" option was just gratitious nonsense. Well, live and learn.

I believe that the average is about 2 to 3 years old. IIRC my old psych classes, they suggest that people do remember stuff from earlier than that at some level, but the trouble is that they have trouble consciously recollecting it because they lacked the language capacity to fit the experience in the proper category.

That being said, the earliest memories are commonly those which inspire terror or anxiety, like a birthday or an accident. That fits fairly well with my earliest memory.

My oldest memory is from when I was at kindergarten (age 4). I tried to slide down one of those fire-poles, and ended up hurting my hands and my backside. Mmmmm....... kindergarten.

they suggest that people do remember stuff from earlier than that at some level, but the trouble is that they have trouble consciously recollecting it...
yes, that's what I think, too
...because they lacked the language capacity to fit the experience in the proper category.
hmm, that's a really fascinating concept. Developmental linguist - added to the lists of things I want to be when I grow up. Except I already am. Grown up, that is. Damn. :(

i think my earliest memory is when i was 3, sitting on the back seat of the car as my mum drove to pick up my older sister from primary school. i remember sitting with my eyes closed as i was facing into the sun so i could see the orangeness through my eyelids and feeling sleepy...mmm....good times :)

My first memory is of standing up in a crib in a hospital, looking up at a doctor who was wearing glasses and talking with who was to be my step parents. I find it strange why i remember this, it wasn't particularly interesting, well maybe to my one year old brain it was. Memory is strange.

I'm fairly certain I was 2, I climbed out of my crib, fell, and hit my head. Crying inevitably followed, but I don't remember it.

I remember something from when I was six... a little personal though, not very clear...
most clear memory is from when I was 9, it's burned in my mind forever
but I think I have a fear of needles from when i was born... I had a lot in me, 3 months pre'mee

I remember pushing a large, rideable firetruck along the driveway when I was three. That's as far back as cogent memory goes for me. Before that, there are snippets, but they're all distorted and jumbled, with all sense of scale and significance lost.

I recall something that happened when I was 2 because it scared me so bad. My parent's 2nd floor bedroom had a walk-in closet with a lock on the outside. My mom was in the closet and I locked her in and then didn't know how to unlock the door. The closet also had a window that opened out onto the roof over our front porch. My mom opened that window and climbed out onto the roof (which had a decent slope to it) and inched along the roof until she made it to the window of the bedroom which, luckily, happened to be slightly cracked open so she could open it all the way and climb in. We were both terrified and we both sat on the floor and held each other and cried for a good long time after she climbed in the window.

My earliest memory was from first grade...so about 6 I guess. It was my first communion (my parents raised me Catholic). Someone said you are not supposed to chew the host because that would be biting Jesus, you are supposed to let it dissolve in your mouth, so that's what I tried to do. It got caught in my throat, I started gagging, and my grandmother (seriously)thought it was some sign that I was the antichrist or something. Of course, I am now an atheist, so maybe it was foreshadowing or something.

I remember with great clarity the first time I saw Optimus Prime die.

Disney World, 1988, when I was 5.

Something from my Kindergarten years I believe, maybe a little earlier. That would make me what? 3-4 years old I guess.

Something from my Kindergarten years I believe, maybe a little earlier. That would make me what? 3-4 years old I guess.

Ooh, someone unearthed the thread. It's like a bump, just better :).

My first vivid memory is being dropped on my head...I think I was 4. I have little snippets of things before that, but I don't remember the contexts of them.

EDIT: Post 69! :fluffle:

I was almost(but not quite) a year old. It was my first Thanksgiving and I was in my high chair. I was throwing stuffing and mashed potatoes at my father. :)

I was 2 1/2, and I was at my friend's house while my mom was in hospital birthing my sister. I drank hot cocoa that night.

Three years old - I forgot to tie my shoelaces at nursery and fell down the stairs. Must've bounced, though, because I didn't break anything.

Three years old - I forgot to tie my shoelaces at nursery and fell down the stairs. Must've bounced, though, because I didn't break anything.

That made me laugh. Especially the bouncing part.

When I was about 3 or 4, being told that no matter how insistent I might have been that I was, I wasn't a girl.

I distinctly remember being, like, two and finding a box of diapers. I was like "What the crap does this do?"

Hmm, I remember like small clips, and the furthest back would be when I was 5 years old and celebrating my birthday at Playgroup - making a crown out of silver card board - I was quite the artist, was that my inner gay coming out? oh, and I was given a chocolate fish and a small present, but I can't remember what is was.

From then on, everything is pretty much a blur until 13 when I got my first moutain bike then everything a blur from then up until 3 years ago.

Oh, and then there was the obvious of heaps of female friends, playing dress ups in girls clothes and playing dolls with my sister.

oh, and I was given a chocolate fish

Well, a chocolate fish certainly seems memorable.

Ooh, someone unearthed the thread. It's like a bump, just better :).
Yeah, I bookmarked it yesterday but was too tired to answer it - today I only found it in my bookmarks... :p

Anyway - there are a few mental scenes or mental pictures that stick, like visiting my grandparents or having a birthday at the Kindergarten. But there's so much buried "up there" - it'd be interesting to unearth that. We tend to not forget but to put memories at rest and sometimes they come back when you hear or smell something, just like it was yesterday.
Strange thing, that human brain ;)

My dad coming up the walkway with a stuffed doggie when I was around three. Most of my childhood memories are fragmented and seem mostly like dreams or brief images.

My earliest was before I was one. I remember being set on my grandmother's glass table in my car seat and starring up at the chandelier. I don't remeber much other than that small snippit.

Well, a chocolate fish certainly seems memorable.

Yeah, true, sad that its not possible to purchase them overseas :(

hmm, I vaguely recall an event of chasing around a toy duck in a hospital and my parents have told me that was when I was two years old...

Mommy hitting me with a frying pan as I attempted to eat paste.

I have various memories from the childcare centre I was at before I turned 5, so the earliest would have been around 2-3.

My earliest memory was crawling around after my brothers and sisters while they ran around our house.

don't remember what age I was.. but I do know I couldn't walk yet.

don't remember much of my childhood. my father's funeral summed it up.


but i do remember seeing my first movie in the theaters in '84 when i was 2.james cameron's aliens.

Disturbingly, having my nappy changed at around the 2 yr mark. I was lying on a chair that my parents STILL have (it's about 26 years old), the same chair that my mother keeps trying to break and my father keeps on putting it back together again, but come on, lets face it, 26 years is a long time fo any upholstered chair that has been pissed on by five children to be around...

We moved when I was just over one year old. I distinctly remember moving. I was in a play-pen on the front lawn, and my brother got to help carry boxes, and I wasn't allowed to help, and I was very mad, because I wanted to help carry boxes. I seriously doubt I could even walk at the time.

A few years ago, though, I remembered something from before that when we lived at my grandmother's house. I was crawling across the floor after the cat, and I looked up, and just had the weirdest feeling that there should be a blue sofa and blocks where the radio cabinet was. I couldn't shake it, so I asked my parents, and they looked at me funny and said "Yes, but you COULDN'T remember that, because we recovered that couch in yellow and moved it when you were less than a year old. Someone must've told you it used to be blue and there." But nobody ever told me it was blue, and I thought I was going crazy thinking it should be blue and in a place I thought it never was. It was only an image, though. I think it was because of the blocks. They were colored, and stacked up.

My earliest memories are nightmares and waking up from them screaming my lungs out.
I remember waking up in my crib in our old house (we moved out of there when I was 2, and I don't remember my brother in the room with me, he was born when I was 1.5, so I guess it happend within the first 1.5 years of my life.), the crib being actually way too big for me, but it still always gave me the feeling of not having any way out. And screaming wasn't much use either, as my room wasn't on the same floor as my parents and I don't remember ever screaming loud enough for them to hear me....

Yes, I do remember the dreams, too. But in hindsight they are ridiculous, so I'm not going to tell them.
I frequently had vivid nightmares and still do today.

I remember....


....



Whoa! I'm adopted!!!

Isn't this topic a bit of an excuse for people to mysteriously hint at whatever must've went wrong in their early childhood for them to have become the slightly disturbed but oh so fragile and intriguing individuals they are now?

It's not personal.

My first conscious memory is my brother's first birthday. At the time I was almost three years old. Why it's the first memory that stuck, I haven't the faintest idea.

Isn't this topic a bit of an excuse for people to mysteriously hint at whatever must've went wrong in their early childhood for them to have become the slightly disturbed but oh so fragile and intriguing individuals they are now?

It's not personal.

My first conscious memory is my brother's first birthday. At the time I was almost three years old. Why it's the first memory that stuck, I haven't the faintest idea.

If you are hinting at me, buddy, I can assure you I'm WAY more than just slightly disturbed :p

If you are hinting at me, buddy, I can assure you I'm WAY more than just slightly disturbed :p
I said it's not personal and I meant it. I've just seen some threads like this on other forums, going on and on and on with people making vague references to their past and how they never got over it. I honestly don't intend to insult anyone for whatever bad things may have happened to them. Such things are too serious to mess with. I just dislike giving people the opportunity to display themselves in a way that makes them too vulnerable.