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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Earliest memories
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Oscar the Grouch
Adopted Cascadian
# 1916
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Posted
What are your earliest memories?
I have impressions of the car crash my family were in when I was about 4. I remember sitting by the side of the road afterwards and going to see the wrecked vehicle in the garage.
I also remember being taken for a walk by my aunt across an area of farmland that was being turned into a new housing estate. Again, knowing the estate now, that must have been when I was 3 or 4.
And I can remember the fun I had watching lorries trying (and dismally failing) to get up the steep hill outside our house during the bad winter of '63, when I was 4.
I always find it funny what things lodge in our memories.
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Faradiu, dundeibáwa weyu lárigi weyu
Posts: 3871 | From: Gamma Quadrant, just to the left of Galifrey | Registered: Dec 2001
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
A few memories from the houseboat (converted pilot boat) we lived on until I was 2 - visitors looking in on me in my bunk - my father reaching cups down from above the AGA and dropping my plastic cup with a straw into the pan of frying bacon, which marked the cup. A bit later refusing to kiss my father goodbye because his beard at the time prickled, so about 4/5.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
I was 2 or 3 and we were living in Arizona for a year. I remember digging in the sand in the yard by the side of the house. It was unpleasantly hot and sunny. There were ants, they were mean.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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cross eyed bear
Shipmate
# 13977
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Posted
22 months. I was standing in front of an open wardrobe. The dresses hanging in there were high above my head. A deep male voice to my left side says 'so, what do you want to wear, then?' Utterly flummoxed at being asked to make the first decision in my life, I point at a cream dress with brown roses print, which I'd never really noticed before. The male voice, after a short pause, says 'are you sure?' I nod vehemently.
My father was teased for years for dressing his eldest daughter in a Summer dress to visit her just-born sister in the middle of an icy November, until I came clean with the memory and Dad confirmed it.
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"One false step in my direction, you'd better believe in the resurrection" Stillgoe & Skellern's "Mrs Beamish"
Posts: 120 | From: Southern Germany | Registered: Jul 2008
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M.
Ship's Spare Part
# 3291
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Posted
I can remember running down the road while I was wearing my 'cry baby bunting' suit. We have a picture, I couldn't be more than 2 - which I would have thought was rather early, but I have a definite memory of laughing while my dad pretend-chased me.
And lying in a tent in a wooden cot made by dad and hearing dad and uncle Phil going out to get water. A camping holiday, I assume.
M.
Posts: 2303 | From: Lurking in Surrey | Registered: Sep 2002
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Around the age of 3, I can remember sitting in my room reading a book. Honestly, it feels like a consciousness light switch: I was looking at the book before, presumably, and I had other books in the bookshelf so I must have been looking at other books before, but the memory is of being partway through the book. Bam. Partway through, I knew that that was what I was doing.
I can also remember visiting a family we were friends with and walking up the hill behind their house.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
I have memories of sister no2 taking me to a park and pushing me on the swings. We moved house when I was just turned 4 and it was definitely not the park near there so It must have been where we lived before, making me age 2-3. I also remember her teaching me the alphabet with a clapping game.
I am joint youngest of 8 siblings and, unsurprisingly, all my earliest memories are of my two older teenaged sisters not my parents.
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
Posts: 2831 | From: Trumpington | Registered: Jan 2008
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Roseofsharon
Shipmate
# 9657
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Posted
2yrs and 1 week - the arrival of my new baby brother.
I have three mental "snapshots" of that time - the addition of a crib to the bedroom furnishings, the arrival of the uniformed district nurse a few days later, and seeing her bathing/oiling the baby.
I'd had these images in my mind for years before I asked my mother if that was what I was remembering, so it wasn't that it had been described to me or I had seen a photograph and was remembering them.
I have very few other early childhood memories, so this must have been a fairly momentous event in my life!
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Talk about books -any books- on our rejuvenatedforum http://www.bookgrouponline.com/index.php?
Posts: 3060 | From: Sussex By The Sea | Registered: Jun 2005
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
For years, the word 'night' came with a powerful image of a round Bakelite light switch.
I am in the cot in my parent's room (so under two) and my mother is in the doorway, hand on the switch, ready to turn off the light. 'Night, night' we say antiphonally 'Night, night.'
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Kitten
Shipmate
# 1179
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Posted
My first clear memory was of being told I was going to have a baby brother or sister. I was sitting on the hearth rug and wearing a dark pink dress with white spots which I remember not liking very much, I was two and a half.
I also remember clearly the day my brother was born when I was 2 and three quarters, I was sent to a neighbours house to play for the day and remember being given burnt sausages for lunch, I remember the midwife's car parked outside of the house, a grey four door morris minor with a pekinese dog asleep on the parcel shelf. I remember an older cousin taking me to buy a box of chocolates for Nurse Murrey, and I remember watching my brother have his first bath in a red plastic bowl on top of the chest of drawers, I thought it hilarious that he peed up the wallpaper
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Maius intra qua extra
Never accept a ride from a stranger, unless they are in a big blue box
Posts: 2330 | From: Carmarthenshire | Registered: Aug 2001
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
Very earliest thing I remember: I was two and a half and in my pushchair with my mother doing the grocery shopping. My pushchair broke – the wheel came off and I had to get home on my two little feet.
I remember the pushchair was blue.
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Rent my holiday home in the South of France
Posts: 3696 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
Pulling into Union Station opposite the Chateau Laurier, circa summer 1951, so was just three, I expect. I vaguely remember the underground corridor to the Chateau Laurier. On the same visit being in my great-aunt's backyard and being attacked by a swarm of biting insects. Being comforted by Grand'maman, my father's grandmother who was as old as the hills then, but who didn't die until 1955. I have a few memories from that year which must have been fairly momentous.
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
I remember not having terribly many friends in lower school, so the few memories I have from under the age of 7 are those of walking around the school playing field by myself.
The first major thing that stuck with me was shortly after my 6th birthday when my dad sat me down in front of the tv and said that I had to watch the news, because it was important. But I had no idea what the Berlin Wall was or why they were hitting it with hammers.
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
Posts: 3791 | From: On the corporate ladder | Registered: Jan 2012
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
23 months. My brother, who was fifteen months older, was sick. He usually went to nursery school, and my mother phoned the teacher and asked if she could bring me instead. (This was a small nursery school run in someone's home.)
We walked the three blocks to the nursery school. I was very impressed by the fact that we were walking on the side of the street where we didn't usually walk. The sidewalk was wet.
When we got to the nursery school the teacher, who had never met me, said the kinds of things that adults say, "So this is Mary," etc. I hated this; I stared at my feet; I was wearing high brown leather shoes and a red dress with white buttons down the front. I remember seeing the red dress, the white buttons and the shoes. I also remember how intensely I wished she would shut up.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Gwai
Shipmate
# 11076
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Posted
I was 18 months old, or so I am told and we were driving to my grandmother's for Christmas, which is how they can date it.* What I remember though is the car stopping in the dark and people, mostly young men I think coming up around the car. They moved the car, and I was very confused. People weren't supposed to move cars. Cars did that themselves, but my mother told me it was okay and so I went back to sleep. I am gather our car had been stuck somehow in some way related to snow and the winter weather, but whatever the reason was doesn't stick with me the way that memory of waking up to people moving one's car does.
Later that same trip I remember walking--well going, I don't remember the actual walking, and I presume I was actually carried or pushed in a stroller--on a incredibly long and boring walk. I had been told that we would look at colored lights and it would be interesting. But the grownups stopped absolutely forever to talk, and it was so very boring. The lights were nice, but not as nice as I thought. There wasn't nearly as much to see as I'd hoped, and I was hungry and bored. I would truly think they walked miles based on how long it took except my mother remembers that walk too. They walked around one single block.
*That was apparently the last time we drove somewhere for Christmas.
[ 13. March 2015, 12:36: Message edited by: Gwai ]
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A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.
Posts: 11914 | From: Chicago | Registered: Feb 2006
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
I remember making up odd names for things. My favorite pajamas, for example, had a button-down flap in the back. I called that a "reason". My younger sister had a pair of red shoes that I called "October shoes".
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
I have a few very early memories from a house we lived in from when I was about 18 months old till just after I was 3 years old.
One particularly vivid one: it's a warm day. I'm sitting in our back garden on a tartan blanket. At the back of the garden, a wooded hill seems to go up and up forever. And on the radio nearby, Eartha Kitt is singing Old Fashioned Girl.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
Waiting to go to someone's birthday party (I suppose I must have been a bit less than 3; I think he was a bit older), and half-past-three seeming never to come.
Being the youngest, I missed out on the "new baby brother/sister" memory, but that won't be a problem for my two-year-old great-niece, M. Her mum posted a video to our family group on FB of her telling M. she was going to have a wee sister or brother, and showing her the ultra-sound picture. It finishes with M. showing the picture to their cat, who displays the ultimate in feline unconcern.
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
Not sure if it's my earliest, but definitely very close to the beginning...
Watching an old Popeye cartoon, in which the characters acted out a Greek myth(Pandora, I think). I was moderately freaked out by the image of Wimpy, as "Quicksilver", with wings on his bowler hat, flying down to Earth.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
I can just remember the Christmas thre months after my second birthday, but not much else from around then. That's because it was definitely Xmas, we were in a caravan, and we were in the 'van for less than a year.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
Being told we were moving and then going next door and telling them.
And sitting on my Dad's boss's lap and watching him wiggle his ears!
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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St. Gwladys
Shipmate
# 14504
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Posted
I have a vague memory of being in a big, old fashioned pram and of a friend of my parents or grandparents speaking to me and introducing me to her son - Stuart? I remember Sloop John B in the charts and was appalled to find it was released in 1963.
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"I say - are you a matelot?"
"Careful what you say sir, we're on board ship here"
From "New York Girls", Steeleye Span, Commoners Crown (Voiced by Peter Sellers)
Posts: 3333 | From: Rhymney Valley, South Wales | Registered: Jan 2009
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
23 months. My brother, who was fifteen months older, was sick. He usually went to nursery school, and my mother phoned the teacher and asked if she could bring me instead. (This was a small nursery school run in someone's home.)
We walked the three blocks to the nursery school. I was very impressed by the fact that we were walking on the side of the street where we didn't usually walk. The sidewalk was wet.
When we got to the nursery school the teacher, who had never met me, said the kinds of things that adults say, "So this is Mary," etc. I hated this; I stared at my feet; I was wearing high brown leather shoes and a red dress with white buttons down the front. I remember seeing the red dress, the white buttons and the shoes. I also remember how intensely I wished she would shut up.
Moo
Amazing. Not only first memory but first experience of anger and embarrassment, which I wouldn't have expected a two year old to feel.
Isn't this thread interesting? We're getting first glimpses of personality, such as Moo being observant and not liking to be the center of attention.
I'm surprised that most of our first memories are as early as age two or three, Gwai being unsurprisingly precocious.
My first was second birthday, picking out my gift in a toy shop, the teddy bear I still have.
Skip to my third birthday when we drive up to a yard that has two gigantic (bigger than me) Irish Setters standing in it and my father says I get to pick one out. I immediately throw my arms around the male dog, because he was the largest and sooo beautiful, but everyone laughs and they tell me I have to pick from the pile of puppies under the tree. I hold each puppy face in my hands and make my decision. This probably was the straight up happiest moment of my life.
Posts: 6817 | Registered: May 2002
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Cutting flowers with my grandmother. I couldn't get the scissors to work and she patiently showed me how. The flowers were snapdragons, the eyes of my grandmother were bright, bright blue, and I was about two.
I have another from about the same age that involves some things Freud would rather enjoy, but this thread hasn't gone there thus far.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
I still recall things of the house my parents moved out of when I was 1.5 years old, so my earliest memories are from before that.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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georgiaboy
Shipmate
# 11294
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Posted
Earliest memory:
A winter late evening, our coalshed caught fire, and my parents and I stood in the yard and watched it burn. I recall that I nearly 3. I think it was November and my birthday was the next month. Very vivid pictures of the flames and worrying about the trees, etc.
Only problem with this memory: the coalshed actually burned in the November BEFORE I was born in December. So how is my memory so vivid? From just my father telling the story? Who knows?
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You can't retire from a calling.
Posts: 1675 | From: saint meinrad, IN | Registered: Apr 2006
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basso
Ship’s Crypt Keeper
# 4228
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Posted
I have scattered memories of living in San Francisco. Walking around town, and being held up to look at the traffic going by in the tunnel below. We lived on Clay Street, on the lower reaches of Nob Hill, so this would have been the Stockton Street tunnel.
We lived in an apartment on a courtyard, and I remember standing by (or behind) my mother's leg as she talked to a police officer at the foot of the stairs. Some kids had taken the car joyriding.
I remember standing on my cot, on the sleeping porch. I was supposed to be taking a nap, and I remember the sense of thrill/guilt/adventure at not sleeping.
Oh! I remember the day the milkman delivered some cottage cheese in a glass dish with a handle. The family cats ate from that dish for years.
And I have an extremely clear memory of my third, and my sister's second, birthday party. She was born 366 days after me, so sharing was common.
My mother had baked a sheet cake with chocolate icing, and numerals '2' on her end and '3' on mine, in silver icing balls. All of the other guests are blurs, and I don't remember Mom there, but I can picture B. as plain as day.
Posts: 4358 | From: Bay Area, Calif | Registered: Mar 2003
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Earliest datable memory is being left with my grandparents when my parents went to a wedding. My mother was wearing a hat. I was three.
I have other memories from around the same age, but that is the one I can tie to a specific date.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
I remember when I was 3 years old, mom taking me to the car to pick up older brother from kindergarten. Phone rings, mom leaves car running and goes inside to answer it (years later I learn she thought the call might be related to her work as a Nixon campaign worker. I regard what follows as karma). I climb into the driver's seat to pretend to drive the car, as I had done many times on my father's lap. I twist the steering wheel a few times, then pull on that interesting lever to the side of the wheel, moving it from "P" to "D". The car begins to roll down our steep driveway. I remember not knowing how to stop it and being scared of getting caught doing something naughty, so I climb into the back seat as the car crosses the (fortunately empty street) and crashes into a tree across the street. I remember feeling very dazed and distant as my mom come out of the house to talk to the agitated neighbor who was demanding to know who was going to replace her tree.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
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Posted
Another second birthday memory story. My parents took me to my three great-great aunts' home to visit. Aunt M lifted me up and carried me to the staircase. She told me that she wanted to keep me, and was going to get some "disappearing pills". Well, I was terrified. A little later, I was sitting on their couch with my right leg against my mother's left leg. Aunt M came to me with a wrapped gift. I knew Christmas was over, so the only reason she was giving me that gift was because It Was Disappearing Pills!!! I was so scared!!!
When my parents finally helped me to open the gift, it contained a black patent leather purse which I can still picture in my mind and remember how it felt in my hands.
Fast forward about forty years. I was talking to my parents about Aunt M, and told them my memories. They looked at each other and told me that they had always wondered why I was so afraid that day. That's when they told me it was my second birthday.
That's not the only strange story about Aunt M. But those should be saved for another thread! ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.
Posts: 18017 | From: 'Twixt the 'Glades and the Gulf | Registered: Aug 2001
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Lothlorien
Ship's Grandma
# 4927
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Posted
I was 18 months old and waiting outside Sunday school at St James, Croydon for my father to come and get me one Sunday afternoon. I can remember the garden which is now quite different and my mother was sceptical of my memory until I described the dress and little gold brooch with a safety chain which I was wearing.
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Buy a bale. Help our Aussie rural communities and farmers. Another great cause needing support The High Country Patrol.
Posts: 9745 | From: girt by sea | Registered: Aug 2003
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Cottontail
Shipmate
# 12234
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Posted
I would have been just under 2 years old, and our mother must just have told my older sister and me that we were going to have a baby brother or sister. Older sister and I were arguing in the back of the car: she was saying the baby would be a boy, and I said it would be a girl.
No one else remembers this, so I wasn't told it later. I think I remember because in the event, I was right!
[ 14. March 2015, 01:26: Message edited by: Cottontail ]
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"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
Posts: 2377 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jan 2007
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crunt
Shipmate
# 1321
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Posted
I can remember walking from the new shopping precinct, and through the old gasworks with my mum as we went to my grandma's house. I remember it because mum told me she was having another baby, and it was to be kept secret. I also remember mum being cross with me because I told grandma that we had a secret and a new baby was coming. I am three years older than my next sibling so I would have been around two and a half years old then. I think that is my earliest memory. I do 'remember' being in a baby's cot in my grandma's house where we lived for a little while when we went back to Wales from New Zealand when I was 18 months old, but I'm not really sure if my memory snippet of the cold room with a cot in it is a real memory, or just a reconstructed memory taken from a family story one of my aunts liked to tell about how I wiped the side of the cot with my dirty nappy one time. I have another vague memory of being pushed in a pram (the old-fashioned kind where babies are lying down and travel feet first) and playing peep-oh! with a boy in another pram, but I have a funny feeling that I am remembering a dream I had as an infant, rather than an event.
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Posts: 269 | From: Up country in the middle of Malaysia | Registered: Sep 2001
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Mamacita
Lakefront liberal
# 3659
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
I have a few very early memories from a house we lived in from when I was about 18 months old till just after I was 3 years old.
Funny, my story starts out the exact same way. I remember a few scenes in the kitchen in that old house. In each one I am eating dessert: my mother's homemade blueberry pie in one; chocolate pudding in another; and in another, vanilla ice cream with Hershey's chocolate syrup poured on top, and I am very intentionally stirring it over and over with a spoon, making it like a milk shake.
Then when I was three, we moved to another house. I remember the day of the move, sitting on the living room sofa with my sister as the men carried stuff in, and a big fuss being made about me having chicken pox.
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Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
Posts: 20761 | From: where the purple line ends | Registered: Dec 2002
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Edith
Shipmate
# 16978
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Posted
I remember sitting up in my pram, one of those old fashioned ones, while my father wheeled me up to church. He used to stand outside the porch and stop everyone to ask if they had bought their Catholic papers. I remember one of the parishioners called Mr Hunt putting his bearded face in the pram and saying all the silly things that some grown ups do, and I turned round and buried my face in the little pillow. When we got home my mother asked if I had been a good baby and my father said, 'No, she wouldn't say hello to Mr Hunt'. I must have been about 19 months.
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Edith
Posts: 256 | From: UK | Registered: Mar 2012
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Spike
Mostly Harmless
# 36
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Posted
I remember a holiday at Pagham in Dorset when I was two. We were staying in a bungalow that backed on to the beach. Some of the memories of that holiday are very hazy, but a few I remember very distinctly. I particularly remember that my eldest sister's boyfriend (She's 15 years older than me) had a Lambretta and came to visit several times and he drove me very slowly up the garden path on it. I also remember going on a boating lake with my dad.
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"May you get to heaven before the devil knows you're dead" - Irish blessing
Posts: 12860 | From: The Valley of Crocuses | Registered: May 2001
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Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Skip to my third birthday when we drive up to a yard that has two gigantic (bigger than me) Irish Setters standing in it and my father says I get to pick one out. I immediately throw my arms around the male dog, because he was the largest and sooo beautiful, but everyone laughs and they tell me I have to pick from the pile of puppies under the tree. I hold each puppy face in my hands and make my decision. This probably was the straight up happiest moment of my life.
What a wonderful memory to have. When I was a child I would usually go driving with my parents on a Sunday afternoon and the route often took us past a place where spaniels were bred. I prayed every time that my father would turn the car into there and we would go and pick a puppy, but we never did. It's surprising the Almighty and I are still on speaking terms after he let me down so consistently at such an early age.
My earliest memories involve my pushchair so I am aged around 2. In one of them I'm waiting in it while my mum gets ready before we go out. In another I'm parked in it by the kitchen table in someone else's house, knowing my mum is upstairs seeing to someone who's ill. She was a nurse so often came in for such informal community duties.
I also have a strong memory of playing on the floor in a white-walled room of a house I didn't know. There was a bed under the window with someone in it and my mum was sitting on the bed talking to that person. This memory only made sense years later during a conversation with my mum when she told me that I had gone with her to visit my grandmother when she was dying. "You don't remember that, I suppose." On describing it, we realised that I did. My grandmother died when I was 2 so the memory is from around that time and as all the others died before I was born it is my only grandparental memory.
I've heard it said that our earliest memory has important things to say about us; mine all involve my mum and we did remain very close. I guess the pushchair indicates my natural laziness - even now I'd rather be driven somewhere than do the driving.
I'm intrigued by the references here to Freud and Aunt M and wonder where the "Odd Memories" thread will be. *looks round hopefully*
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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
Posts: 1289 | Registered: May 2011
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by basso:
I have scattered memories of living in San Francisco. Walking around town, and being held up
I thought sure this was the start of one of those, "If you remember the sixties you weren't really there," stories.
Cliffdweller climbing back into the back seat of the car so no one would guess who'd started it mad me laugh till I cried.
Posts: 6817 | Registered: May 2002
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
I very clearly remember the taste of grip water. I hadn't tasted it for 30 years, then tried a spoonful - I knew that taste very well!
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
It is interesting we are all remembering back, in some cases earlier than our 2nd birthdays. I know that my memories of the houseboat all pre-date my second birthday as we moved out shortly after my younger sister was born and she is 22 months younger than me - and several of those memories are summer memories - the cup falling in the pan definitely is. And the pictures weren't things I was told - I had to ask later about my dresses hanging over my bed and sleeping behind a curtain in a bunk. Can't remember which room, just the curtain drawn back, dresses above and people's faces looking in - and not knowing the people so feeling frightened.
I don't remember that sister being born, but do remember the youngest sister's birth - and actually being around for that one (a home birth) but I was 5 by then, coming home from school to fuss and bother.
But thinking about it, we spent a lot of time being shuffled off to our maternal grandmother during house moves or when my parents would prefer an easier time without children to deal with, so missed some of the more interesting events. So I don't remember moving from the boat or the next house, although I do remember the frogs in the outside loo, the morello cherry tree and the stream at the bottom of the garden.
Lots of memories of that stream, watching frogs swimming breaststroke, river workers floating past on a punt reed cutting, my parents taking us by boat to see where the stream went and arriving at the sailing club we were members of, my sister riding my pedal car into it and me being most upset (fortunately for my sister, she was underneath and drowning, my shouts saved her).
We lived in that house from when I was 2 to when I was 4, then lived for a while with grandparents before moving into the next house around my 5th birthday.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Sarasa
Shipmate
# 12271
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Posted
I think I can remember being a few months old lying in a carrycot in the back of my grandfather's Austin 7 while my grandmother made a fuss of me. My mum claims we both looked at each other as neither of us was keen on silly baby talk.
I certainly remember some things from the house we left before I was two. Looking through the bars on the stairs at people below, sitting in my pram looking at the birds in my dad's avery and him coming up behind me to give me a kiss, being scared of branches knocking on my window at night. I still have a phobia about certain hosue plants due in part to that, and in part to watching a bit of Quatermass before I was five.
My brother was born when I was three and a half and I stayed with my grandparents. He was born at Christmas and I remember missing my mum and being very put out by all the fuss.
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'I guess things didn't go so well tonight, but I'm trying. Lord, I'm trying.' Charlie (Harvey Keitel) in Mean Streets.
Posts: 2035 | From: London | Registered: Jan 2007
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Barnabas Aus
Shipmate
# 15869
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Posted
My memory also dates from about two years old. I was in a suburban cottage hospital for removal of tonsils and adenoids, and got into trouble for eating a biscuit given to me by a staff member, as I was due for surgery later that day. The next clear memory is of a train journey to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, with my grandfather on the footplate, and my aunt and cousin in the front carriage with me. He retired when I was three and a half, so before then, possibly about the time of my sister's birth as my mother wasn't with us.
[ 14. March 2015, 11:16: Message edited by: Barnabas Aus ]
Posts: 375 | From: Hunter Valley NSW | Registered: Sep 2010
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Amazing. Not only first memory but first experience of anger and embarrassment, which I wouldn't have expected a two year old to feel.
Isn't this thread interesting? We're getting first glimpses of personality, such as Moo being observant and not liking to be the center of attention.
I'm surprised that most of our first memories are as early as age two or three, Gwai being unsurprisingly precocious.
It looks to me that many of us can remember a notable event from our third year and thanks to the calendar and family history the exact day can be determined. I'm sure plenty of my memories are from before my 4th birthday (looking through back issues of the Radio Times for example) but I have no way to tie down the dates.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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chive
Ship's nude
# 208
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Posted
My two earliest memories are both from the month after I turned two. The first is visiting the hospital when my little sister was born. I don't remember anything about her but I can remember accidently weeing on my mum's hospital bed!
The second was about three weeks later when I went to my uncle's funeral. I don't remember him at all but I distinctly remember what I was wearing, the fact my older sister and I sat at the back left hand side of the church with a friend of my parents and just not understanding why there was a big box and being told to shhh when I asked about it in a, probably too loud, toddler fashion.
Oddly enough, my uncle's death shows the vagaries of memory. He lived with us after he was diagnosed with cancer and had his leg amputated at the knee. It wasn't until my mother heard me telling someone aged 8 or 9 that he had been poisoned after being bitten by a snake that she realised someone must have explained the cancer spreading being like the poison in a snakebite spreading and I got completely the wrong end of the stick and it stuck.
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'Edward was the kind of man who thought there was no such thing as a lesbian, just a woman who hadn't done one-to-one Bible study with him.' Catherine Fox, Love to the Lost
Posts: 3542 | From: the cupboard under the stairs | Registered: May 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
My earliest memory is sun shining on an orange wall in the hospital where I had my tonsils removed, at age 4. I also (vaguely) remember, also from age 4, a dream in which I went to school for the first time. I dreamt this the day before it was fulfilled, if not in detail then in principle. (I started Kindergarten at 4.)
Wait, I also remember, from either 4 or 3, a day at preschool where there was weird foam washed up on the beach (my preschool was on the shores of Lake Washington).
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Kitten
Shipmate
# 1179
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
I very clearly remember the taste of grip water. I hadn't tasted it for 30 years, then tried a spoonful - I knew that taste very well!
I'm like that with Delrosa Rose hip syrup
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Maius intra qua extra
Never accept a ride from a stranger, unless they are in a big blue box
Posts: 2330 | From: Carmarthenshire | Registered: Aug 2001
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
Not to mention mineral oil and milk of magnesia. ![[Projectile]](graemlins/puke2.gif)
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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