what is your earliest memory?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

the reason i ask is because i spent yesterday at the childrens hospital with my son ( 7 months ). he has to wear a plaster cast from chest to knee ( the first one was chest to ankle on one leg ) to correct growth of his hip, this will last for 3 months and we are at the halfway mark now. he had to be put under general anaesthetic and the whole thing was quite an ordeal for us both.
i also went through similar treatment as a baby for the same problem,and in those days ( when dinosaurs roamed ) parents werent allowed to stay, the nursing staff were dragons and i have vivid and nightmarish memories of hospital etc etc which have surfaced now my boy is undergoing the same stuff. people keep telling me " oh its good to do it now he wont remember bla bla bla " and no one seems to get it when i say BUT I REMEMBER ..!
i dont know how it affected me or if it still does as an adult though it could explain some things hahaha.
no seriously i want to know, what early memories do you have? how vivid are they and are they good/bad or indifferent? do you remember events in your childhood/babyhood which you think have a bearing on what kind of person you are now?

― donna (donna), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 20:08 (twenty-three years ago)

i await your responses with eager anticipation!!!!!!!!!!!!
this is really important to me, possibly an exercise in trying to be reassured yes but hey whatever works, right?

― donna (donna), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 20:11 (twenty-three years ago)

first memory: there's green, a hazy green. And then: I remember the brown carpets we used to have, they felt warm and comforting. but now I'm wondering if the warmth and comfort isn't being projected in retrospect after watching home movies. slight tangent: I hate hate hate watching home movies, not so much because they're dull and they go on too long and dad doesn't know how to coax the most out of his actors, but watching a younger me is mostly excruciating, I'm not sure why. I wanna go back to the days before hypermediated, hypersexualized self-consciousness?

When I was somewhere between 3 and 5, my parents asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up. I answered: small again. and I remember the clarity of that thought- things are good now, they might never be this good again.

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 20:31 (twenty-three years ago)

I was born prematurely, spent my formative days and weeks in an incubator. I think the green fits in somewhere around that time. And I'm pretty sure the early days in the glass box did something to me.

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 20:34 (twenty-three years ago)

I was born in Feb. 1972. My earliest memory that I can definitely date is September 1976; it was when I discovered calendars in nursery school (I remember being surprised when I looked at the calendar one day and it said "October" instead of "September").

I think you are talking about the phenomenon of "infant amnesia":

http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~cadams/

Age 3-5 sounds like a reasonable period for a person to have their earliest memory to me. If people say they remember something from 2 years old or before, I almost always raise my eyebrows, being a natural skeptic (I think they are likely creating their memory influenced at least in part by something someone told them).

― Joe (Joe), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 20:35 (twenty-three years ago)

My dad was given a cine camera (for young people: like a stone age video camera) when they got me (I'm not sure if it was some promotional freebie deal, adopt a baby, get a free cine!) and they showed the films at every opportunity, so it is very hard to sort out what I directly remember from what I only remember from seeing it on film repeatedly. I do remember my new baby brother persistently throwing a rattle out of his pram, and I'd have been three and some months.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 20:42 (twenty-three years ago)

yeah, Joe, the green is like a rothko or something, i can't pin anything down. maybe it's a glitch-memory that really comes from me staring drunkenly through my green beer bottle at age 18 the carpets start coming in at abt 3, i'm pretty clear on that.

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 20:43 (twenty-three years ago)

there should be a full stop between '18' and 'the carpets' but if you like it was a joycean attempt at replicating the blurry falsities of memory

― Mitch Lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 20:45 (twenty-three years ago)

Up on a high chair in the kitchen in our house in Hawaii -- I am two or so, maybe three. I am eating some sort of kiddie pasta Spaghetti O thing, and my dad walks in the door and smiles at me and says hi. Very cool. :-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 20:51 (twenty-three years ago)

First memory: a murky/grainy black & white image - my Mum and Granny side by side in front of me, pushing me along in my pram. The edges of the pram's hood act like some kind of framing - like on those silent movies where the image shrinks into a circle surrounded by black.
Assuming this is the latest possible memory of pram-bulation, it would put me at 2 or less, I think (though I bet I stayed with that transport mode for as long as I could get away with it).
As others have said - it's difficult to tell whether the sense of security attached to this memory is a feeling I had at the time, or is being projected onto it.
The whole business is very difficult though - I believe there's been a lot of work done which shows our 'memories' are largely (re)construction rather than recall.....or I could be mis-remembering that.
I do find it very difficult to imagine that at 7-10 months old we can even form enough continuous coherent perception from our senses to be able to store anything as a 'memory' other than in some kind of behaviourist 'conditioning' way or as a semi-hardwired geometric matching process (eg recognising faces and expressions). But you say you did, and there's no arguing with that. Besides, some say now that the first 6 years of a child's life pretty much set the agenda for the rest of them....
I just feel that there must also be some minimum period of time needed for the processes involved in this psychological sensitivity, whatever they are, to themselves develop.
Maybe Google around for developmental psychology/perception in babies/memory stuff?

I like to believe that just as I fade away, this earliest memory will reappear, but the image will slowly sharpen into a perfect replay - and I'll see and hear my Mum and Granny speaking quietly to each other, and I'll feel just as safe and secure as I think I might have at the time.

― Ray M (rdmanston), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 21:35 (twenty-three years ago)

heeeeey..... donna, do you clearly remember your hip ordeal as it happened when you were riley's age, i wonder if a traumatic event triggers a more lasting snapshot of the memory?
i was born a month premature and had all kinds of physical trauma - nothing long lasting, but it had my mum feeling all my pain for me at the time - i think i'd have to do a re-birthing thing to make myself feel any of it, and then i might be 'creating' a memory anyway!
yep, the infant amnesia thing looks like it may have some interesting research within... let me know what you find!

― jayne (jayne), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 22:12 (twenty-three years ago)

Disturbingly, my earliest memory is of a wake, for my great-aunt. I was 2 or 3, I think, and I vividly remember touching her body, and not being freaked out at all, just thinking that she felt different.

But I think this has given me a lifelong preoccupation with death.

― nory (nory), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 22:24 (twenty-three years ago)

yes i have to admit my memories are possibly/probably reconstruction of events led by other peoples comments, though i do have some pretty clear ones of the childrens ward doors with little square windows, those hospital doors that swing open. i could see them from where i lay, and i remember nurses coming through them into the ward which was just one big room with about 5o children in it. the doors would be locked so people couldnt just come in willy-nilly, and the nurses would click the latch as they went out. i dont know how they got in.
i also remember being wheeled into theatre, staring at the disappearing face of my mum as i went.
but yes i will check out some sites on infant amnesia, thanks for the suggestions people.:-)

― donna (donna), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 22:43 (twenty-three years ago)

i should also add that i do have clear memories of being very frightened and lost, and dealing with it alone in the dark at night. but as i did undergo the same op at 7 years of age i could be confusing these times with the earlier, it is hard to say since some recollections are most definately ones of being very very small and in a cot, and some are quite obviously older ones.

― donna (donna), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 22:55 (twenty-three years ago)

when i was little i touched a dead thread

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 23:05 (twenty-three years ago)

aha ! well there you go tracer, so the question has been asked before.
i will read previous thread with interest.

― donna (donna), Wednesday, 2 October 2002 23:49 (twenty-three years ago)

My first memory was crawling around with relatives laughing at me all over the place. There was no escape and I think I was starting to develop an acute sense of fear.

― Honda, Wednesday, 2 October 2002 23:52 (twenty-three years ago)

It's all very hazy, and hard to say what is or isn't reconstructed. I think my earliest memories are from about four or five and involve just being home with my mom and the sunlight coming through the windows of our house. (No Freudian comments, please.)

Associated with this is a memory of my mom cooking liver and watching the Galloping Gourmet, and somehow I was confused about whether the scent of the cooking was coming from the TV. Or I remember remembering something like that. But the confusion between the TV and the real life cooking suggests this would be from rather early in my life (one hopes).

― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 3 October 2002 00:04 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm not even sure who the Galloping Gourmet really was at this point, or whether or not this is a figure likely to be recognized by non-American contributors.

― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 3 October 2002 00:05 (twenty-three years ago)

Donna --
It just so happens that I'd been doing a bit of searching on trauma and childhood within the past few weeks. Here's an interesting online article regarding Childhood Trauma. The author, Peter Levine, has written several books related to trauma. One of them in particular might have some insights for you and your child: It Won't Hurt Forever: Guiding Your Child Through Trauma.

[Here's hoping the HTML is accepted.]

― ragnfild (ragnfild), Thursday, 3 October 2002 00:11 (twenty-three years ago)

I broke my collar-bone when I was old enough to be running around by myself, but I have no memory of it. Heh, I probably could have broken my neck doing what I was doing. I had my own way of sliding down the banister. I didn't sit on it, I sort of kicked my legs up behind me, held onto to the banister, and slid down. One time, while I was kicking my legs up, I somehow flipped completely over the banister.

― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 3 October 2002 00:16 (twenty-three years ago)

thank you ragnfild the links are great :-))))))
thats big smiles btw not lots of chins.

― donna (donna), Thursday, 3 October 2002 00:16 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh, duh. The Galloping Gourmet apparently was born in London.

― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 3 October 2002 00:22 (twenty-three years ago)

donna i think a lot of mine are reconstructions, too..... there's a famous story in my family about how a big chair fell on me when i was probably 1 or 2 and i remember it VIVIDLY however i also, less vividly, remember asking my mother what the hell she was talking about when she brought up the story of the chair, so...

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 3 October 2002 04:17 (twenty-three years ago)

yeah, alot of my memories seem to be in third person (I can see myself in them). So, they are obviously influenced by things I've been told. I do remember my first day of nursery school, and building a house of Duplo.

― jel -- (jel), Thursday, 3 October 2002 06:50 (twenty-three years ago)

I remember my sister being born. I was 2 at the time and my mother had a home birth. While she was upstairs delivering my sister, I was downstairs being looked after by my Aunt. I remember taking all the cushions off the 3-piece suite and laying them out on the floor crazy paving fashion and then jumping on them. I also have very vague memories of our first house, the staircase particularly. That would have been pre-2. Also, there was someone who lived nearby who owned a puma (or similar big cat - obviously pet ownership rules weren't as strict in the early seventies), I remember that and the effect it had on our cat (instant fright-o-matic).

― Alfie (Alfie), Thursday, 3 October 2002 07:14 (twenty-three years ago)

"move towards the light!!"

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 3 October 2002 07:29 (twenty-three years ago)

a dog jumping on top of me. maybe...

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Thursday, 3 October 2002 09:32 (twenty-three years ago)

Feeding a cookie to my new shiny red shoes

― kinski (kinski), Thursday, 3 October 2002 10:20 (twenty-three years ago)

I don;t know how old I was, but I remember escaping from my crip. I actually remember the feeling of my little feet between the railings, and climbing out... I was such a rebel then, and my life has been downhill since ;-)

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Friday, 4 October 2002 02:58 (twenty-three years ago)

I don;t know how old I was, but I remember escaping from my crib. I actually remember the feeling of my little feet between the railings, and climbing out... I was such a rebel then, and my life has been downhill since ;-)

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Friday, 4 October 2002 02:59 (twenty-three years ago)

oops sorry ya'll

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Friday, 4 October 2002 02:59 (twenty-three years ago)

I remember doing a shit on our tacky red shaggy carpet. Haha.

― Andrew (enneff), Friday, 4 October 2002 04:23 (twenty-three years ago)

I can also remember a dream that I had when I was very, very young (like 1 year). It's all a bit too distressing for me to describe it here.

― Andrew (enneff), Friday, 4 October 2002 04:24 (twenty-three years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.