Your first memory

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My first memory is lying on the couch looking out the window, picking my nose, and realising that if you close your eyes you can see a negative of what you were seeing before eyelid descent.

My second memory is walking in circles listening to 'The Lion sleeps tonight' while my mam did the dusting.

What is your first/second memory?

― nickie (nickie), Friday, 7 February 2003 13:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Or alternatively, what was your first mammary?

― nickie (nickie), Friday, 7 February 2003 13:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Mammaries... all alone in the moonlight...

― nickie (nickie), Friday, 7 February 2003 13:50 (twenty-two years ago)

being run over by a horse on my fourth birthday at the Abbeydale industrial hamlet in Sheffield.

― chris (chris), Friday, 7 February 2003 13:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I like asking people this question. My own -- I am sitting in a high chair eating a kiddie pasta of some sort -- animal Spaghetti-Os or something -- in the kitchen of the house in Hawaii, and my dad comes in through the door to the garage and smiles and says hi to me. I like that. :-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 7 February 2003 14:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I wake up from an afternoon nap on my parents bed and recall a dream I had involving a leopard-spotted indian.

― fletrejet, Friday, 7 February 2003 14:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Pushing my brother down the stairs on the back of a dump truck, but I fear I may have seen that on video at a later date.

Possibly then it's climbing up onto kitchen cupboards age 2 or something and somehow breaking the wine glasses my mum got for her birthday. I believe I was locked in my bedroom for the rest of the year.

― Graham (graham), Friday, 7 February 2003 14:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Getting a drawing pin stuck in the sole of my Muppet Show slippers. Awwww.

― Lynskey (Lynskey), Friday, 7 February 2003 14:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmmm, i think jumping off the roof of my house when i was 4 in the blizzard of 78 aftermath.

― Chris V. (Chris V), Friday, 7 February 2003 14:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Blimmin eck, extreme first memories from both the Chrises.

I can only imagine how the rest of your lives panned out.

― nickie (nickie), Friday, 7 February 2003 14:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Being in church and not knowing why I was there, also going somewhere afterwards and being facinated by the ornate ceiling. It took my parents ages to figure out where I was when I asked about this. Apparently I was at a wedding and then the reception and I was 18 months old.

Second memory, being on a farm and my dad throwing chicken feed around my wellies, then crying cos the chickens were pecking my feet.

― Celeste (Celeste), Friday, 7 February 2003 14:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Hey, exactly where does the position of things like videos and PHOTOGRAPHS play into this thread, since such things can trigger memories and help evoke them when u might not have been able to recall them on your own, right? So would such memories count ? Since if so, looking at the pictures, I extensively remember a lot of things that happened to me when i was 1 and 2, looking at the pictures of my first birthday partees, eating popsicles on the deck, etc.

But I don't know if I would remember any of this if these snapshots were never taken

― Vic (Vic), Friday, 7 February 2003 14:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Looking up out of my cot at a bright light. This memory was partly brought out by seeing the photo that the bright light was the flash for.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Friday, 7 February 2003 14:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Nasty chikkins. Is there a general age when memories begin? I reckon mine was probably around 3, before I started school.

There are pictures of my second birthday party but I don't remember anything about that. The first photo that elicits a memory is, me and my sis sitting on Santa's lap.

Three seems awful late though.

― nickie (nickie), Friday, 7 February 2003 14:30 (twenty-two years ago)

There are a few memories I have, but I'm not sure which comes first. I think it's this one:

I'm sitting on my mum's knee in the back of my parents' car. We're in the car park of York station, waiting for a train to take us on holiday. I must have been 2 at the time.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 7 February 2003 14:40 (twenty-two years ago)

I remember many things happening to me which there is photo evidence of, the photos keep it fresh. But the two I mentioned are non-photographed memories.

― Celeste (Celeste), Friday, 7 February 2003 14:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the only things that I "remember" because of photos are the faces of the three grandparents who died when I was young. I can remember being with them, just, but their faces in the memories are mostly blank; I can only remember what they looked like from seeing photos.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 7 February 2003 14:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I generally have a shitty memory, so I think my earliest memory is from when I was about 3, when I was living in India, of a dusty red Indian dirt road. I have another memory of monkeys jumping on my mom while she was carrying me (trying to get to some animal crackers in her bag), but I'm not sure if this is a real memory or a mental image I created based on her telling me this story.

― Nick A. (Nick A.), Friday, 7 February 2003 14:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I mostly remember songs and the places I heard them.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 7 February 2003 14:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Dropping a sausage roll I was about to eat on the floor and the dog eating it! I was 3 or 4. Mum took me back to the bakery and bought me a new one! HOORAY FOR MUMS! My eldest brother reckons he remembers realising that light travels faster than sound when he was 18 months old, because he saw some kids playing football at the other end of the street, and noticing the *bang* of them kicking the ball came slightly after he saw them kick it. I reckon he's a lying twat.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Friday, 7 February 2003 15:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, but remember how he invented Chaos Theory at the age of two. Amazing.

― nickie (nickie), Friday, 7 February 2003 15:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Jeez, I didn't realise you knew him.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Friday, 7 February 2003 15:12 (twenty-two years ago)

I can't remember anything before the advent of this week.

― SittingPretty (sittingpretty), Friday, 7 February 2003 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

My grandmother picking me out of my crib and holding me. It was when she was watching me and my parents were in SanFran. I was barely 2 years old, which is pretty early for a memory, I think.

― Oops (Oops), Friday, 7 February 2003 15:46 (twenty-two years ago)

I remember getting my finger pinched in the closet door in my parents' bedroom when we were looking at buying the house they currently live in (I was 2).

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Friday, 7 February 2003 15:51 (twenty-two years ago)

i tht it was this but then i realised it was this

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 7 February 2003 15:51 (twenty-two years ago)

I remember sitting in the back seat of a car as my dad helped my mom into the passenger seat at a hospital. This was when we were taking her and my baby sister home - so I would have been a little more than 2 years old.

I also remember sitting in the back seat of the car at a drive in movie? According to my brother it was was Raiders of the Lost Ark so I would have been 2 or 3 at the time as well!

Why do both my first memories involve the back seat of a car???!!! Must have been something cosmic about the way I was conceived...

― marianna, Friday, 7 February 2003 15:59 (twenty-two years ago)

If so, Marianna, you must get a feeling of karmic equilibrium evert time you hear Tina Turner's 'Steamy Windows'. I know I do.

― nickie (nickie), Friday, 7 February 2003 16:02 (twenty-two years ago)

aged ~2yrs - walking on the stone border of a garden wearing a white summer dress with colourful polka dots, holding the hand of my mother's best friend

aged ~3 yrs - screaming as loud as i could when brendan from kinder (my very own baby with the one eyebrow) walked up to me as i sat at a small pine table playing with 'the pink tower' (a series of pink cubic blocks you arranged from largest to smallest in a tower)
-my attention waning while sitting on the floor at kinder listening to faith (one of the teachers), i looked at the chicken wire on the door with my eyes unfocussed and it suddenly jumped out at me all 3d

aged ~4 yrs - dancing frenziedly to 'karma chameleon' in a room with mottled grey-beige carpet and curtains

all these memories influenced by photos/stories and jumbled up and rearranged but they still have a grain of truth maybe

― minna (minna), Friday, 7 February 2003 16:28 (twenty-two years ago)

thinking of these memories has brought heaps more back too, this is cool cos when i first opened this thread i felt sad from not being able to remember anything

― minna (minna), Friday, 7 February 2003 16:31 (twenty-two years ago)

My first memory is of walking through a building with my dad It had blocked off sections where workmen were working, and they were covered with flyposters . It must have been round about when my brother was born, mid-1977, but I don't remember seeing my brother in hospital or anything.

The first memory I can definitely place in time and space is October 1977. I was in Portugal, on an Algarve beach. I have two memories of that day; one was pressing myself against the base of a cliff because I was scared of the bigger breaking waves. The second was of making a sandcastle with my nanny on the edge of the sea, then as soon as it was completed destroying it "because the sea was going to anyway".

― Mark C (Mark C), Friday, 7 February 2003 16:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Is it just me, or is your earliest memory now just a memory of a memory. I mean, I remember being 10 or 11, and remembering being 2. But now I'm not sure if it's the 'official' memory I'm recalling now of being 2, or if it's been recreated/restructured

― Oops (Oops), Friday, 7 February 2003 16:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Frederic Jameson to thread!

― nickie (nickie), Friday, 7 February 2003 16:56 (twenty-two years ago)

As soon as reality is converted to memory, it is reinterpreted. Very few memories exist in a real or true form, i think. Nostalgia and that, innit?

― nickie (nickie), Friday, 7 February 2003 17:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, but I remember being in my car this morning. I'm not so sure I remember being held by grandma, but just remember that at one time I did remember that.

― Oops (Oops), Friday, 7 February 2003 17:05 (twenty-two years ago)

My first memory is of being tied down at a hospital and having a large chunk of my thigh excised (infected shot going into gangrene) without any anesthetic.

Fun.

― Melissa W (Melissa W), Saturday, 8 February 2003 00:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Gruesome Mel.

My first is being hung upside down by my mother choking on a piece of roast. This was at about 18 mths.

― That Girl (thatgirl), Saturday, 8 February 2003 01:51 (twenty-two years ago)

vaguely, sum friends o mummy looking down on me in mah crib admiringly. or less vaguely, aged 3, driving by a local lough (lake) discussing wit me dad da fact dat me mam was in dee 'ospital givin boirth 2 me brutha.

― naked as sin (naked as sin), Saturday, 8 February 2003 03:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Eating dog biscuits at age 2. They were yummy.

― Curtis Stephens, Saturday, 8 February 2003 21:31 (twenty-two years ago)

jus cos u wer on da set o "round da twist".

― naked as sin (naked as sin), Sunday, 9 February 2003 02:38 (twenty-two years ago)

First thing I remember is taking a bath in a tiny baby-sized bathtub in the garage in front of the giant rust-colored Chrysler station wagon. I was 2.

― Chris Barrus (xibalba), Sunday, 9 February 2003 03:26 (twenty-two years ago)

MIne was when I was 2 too. I remember walking along the side of the across-the-street neighbors house to see an above-ground pool under the shadow of the woods in their backyard. their was a hill down to it and I was a little intimidated by its steepness.

― A Nairn (moretap), Sunday, 9 February 2003 04:57 (twenty-two years ago)

I was wearing red overalls

― A Nairn (moretap), Sunday, 9 February 2003 05:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I think my earliest memory is of falling about six–seven feet from some playground equipment when I was six or so. I remember blacking out on the way down, but I don't remember any of the circumstances surrounding with much clarity (I think I was at a new school), which is odd since you'd think there'd be a big to-do if a 2nd grader fell in the playground and blacked out. It could be that my "blacking out" was just my closing my eyes in fright.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Sunday, 9 February 2003 06:07 (twenty-two years ago)

two years pass...

I just thought of another really early memory (though possibly not the earliest). I had broke open some sort of maraca, and my sister said something like, "You wanted to see what was inside, right?" sort of trying to defend me. And I said no, that's not why I did it, and remember not knowing why I did it. I think I just did it. In retrospect, it's actually kind of an interesting early moment of self-consciousness, dealing with being expected to give reasons for one's actions. It must have been pretty early, since I can't really remember going around breaking things for the hell of it.

― RS (Catalino) LaRue (RSLaRue), Monday, 20 June 2005 13:09 (twenty years ago)

I have lots of early memories, I'm just not sure which one is oldest.

I will go for: getting lost in my village, wandering away from home and ending up in a strangers house (as they saw me outside in the road). How I got home I don't know but I remember seeing my house again before the day was through and there were dozens of poeple waiting for me. it was late.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Monday, 20 June 2005 13:22 (twenty years ago)

I have a vague memory of being bathed in the kitchen sink when I was a baby, but maybe I am just remembering my sister being bathed there when she was a baby.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Monday, 20 June 2005 13:32 (twenty years ago)

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