What was your first cognizant memory in life and how old were you?

I am deducing that I was younger than 3 because I didn't talk until right after my 3rd birthday. I do, however, remember my mother saying, "Look Mike, he's doing it again," when I would fetch my father's shoes when he went to work. "How does he understand us but not talk?" I still hear my mother's voice and can see the row of shoes my father had. I think the next time is standing in line between Judy and Maureen in kindergarten as we filed out for the day.

Seeing the side of our house partially covered by daddy long-legs. I would have been three or four, I'm not sure.

2 years and 9 months.

My newborn little brother in his cradle.

I was adopted when I was three years old. I can't remember my life pre-adoption at all, or even the day I was adopted, but I can remember the first apartment we lived in which we only lived in for the first year I was with my new parents.

I remember my mother shrieking in pain after pricking her finger with the diaper pin while fastening my cloth diaper, in a bedroom that I had until we moved, when I was three years old.

In fact, I have many memories in that house. But I'm definitely able to walk, because the memories are of me walking by myself around the block, to the neighbors (something that would never happen nowadays!)

I remember when my brother was born and I had just turned 4 at that point. I remember my grandparents being there to take care of us and my mom and dad coming home from the hospital and how tiny he was.

I was with my brother in a playground right next door to our house. He was five and I was two (almost three). I got lost and went out the wrong side. I don’t remember being lost but I specifically remember seeing a boy in a Batman t-shirt.

I remember being born.

My step dad lying on the couch on his back while throwing me up in the air/catching me repeatedly face to face. I laughed uncontrollably. My earliest memory and I was two to three years old.

When I was four, watching the 1988 Olympics -- the gymnasts Shushunova vs. Silivas in the all-around, lol!

People have a lot of false memories because pictures were taken and that seems to trigger a memory of that situation. So a non-photo memory I have, which must have been when I was 3 1/2 to 4 years old, was taking the freshly delivered milk bottle out of the milk box on the front porch. It was either too heavy, slippery or the cold glass on the hot cement caused it to shatter. I remember getting in trouble for it, but feeling wrongly accused, I was trying to do a good thing and help bring it in. I had always been very excited about what was in the milk box as it was like magic that things would appear there, especially when we ordered chocolate milk.

a good few memories from before i was in school.

i remember being in the crib and standing and wauling at my mother to wake her up. that's believable. what's dubious even to me is that i also remember thinking in language, "why won't she get up?" though only waa-waa-waa came out of my mouth. but i do remember it. i became a wordy guy (language teaching as a profession) so i'll stand by it.

My earliest memory is sneaking into my brother's nursery while he slept in his crib. I was about two and a half at the time.

I have a memory from when i was 3 and a half, when I got hit by a neighbor's car pulling out of their driveway. I wasn't hurt badly -- she was going very slowly and more just bumped into me and knocked me down. I was outside *on my own*!!

That's the youngest memory, but I have a number of early memories from when I was four.

I can remember a lot of details about the house we lived in when I was born. We moved out when I was 3 1/2.

I remember being taken to the hospital kicking and screaming because I had a 104 degree temperature at the age of three. But no memory of returning home from that experience.

My first memory is riding in a stroller, so I would have been, what? Two?

R17, seven?

I was born in California and we moved when I was 3 1/2. That is an easy before and after for me to realize I have early and very vivid memories. My nanny Clementina, playing with a neighbor girl (didn’t like her), my brother being born or when he had surgery at 6 weeks and I was 2 1/2 when he was born. I remember the time I busted my head open and needed stitches and my brother wasn’t born then.

I have always assumed I have these very early memories cause my mother spoke to me so often. I spoke early and sung the ABC song as a toddler. She read to me every night and I apparently memorized the books and would recite them to her instead.

I think early language development helps with memory. If you couldn’t speak or if you didn’t have a word for something then you can’t recall that memory.

Sitting on the potty at my babysitter's (Mrs Fitzgerald) house - next to the refrigerator. Yucky peanut butter and jelly sandwich (crunchy peanut butter - which I still hate). Threw it behind the fridge. I kept looking at the little orange and red juice jugs on the window sill. I wanted that instead.

Looking out the side of my stroller at the snow on the ground. I wanted to touch it.

I remember my 3rd birthday party and have clear memories of my horrible Grandma who died a few months later.

It’s hard to know exactly when a memory takes place that early since you really don’t have a sense of how old you are or what year it is until childhood.

But OP, your question was a writing assignment in my first MFA in creative writing course.

This is not what I wrote about, but this may be one of my earliest memories. When I was five or so, in kindergarten, my family moved and it was a tumultuous year for a lot of reasons. I told my parents I wanted my Winnie the Pooh clock and they had no idea what I was talking about. I have vivid memories of this. I demanded my Winnie the Pooh clock and they thought I had lost my mind. Then they saw in an old photo that I was playing with a “busy box,” a sensory toy for kids aged 6 months to three years. They realized that that was what I was remembering and told me they threw it away when I was around two years old and I LOST MY SHIT.

So around age five I had clear memories from around age two, at least. They told this story all my life and so my clear memory of it at age 42 is probably reinforced by lifelong discussions.

I do have a lot of very vivid memories from the condo my family moved out of when I was five, including the neighborhood. I couldn’t say if those memories are from age two or age four and a half, though. There’s no way to tell.

One really random thing. When the movie Evita came out, I saw it with a friend and when the song “And the Money Keeps Rolling In” came on, I started singing with it automatically never having heard the song before. It was REALLY weird. I told my parents and they laughed and told me that my mom used to play the 1976 record when I was a baby. (I was born in mid-1978.) It was just lodged in my subconscious.

I remember the death of JFK; I was around 2.5 years old at the time. I remember my parents being glued to the TV in the living room that day, and both of them crying. While I agree that I was on the young side of memories, seeing both of your parents sob at the TV is a traumatic experience.

Decorating an Easter egg with a spinner. I don’t know how old I was. Younger than 5. My husband is convinced he remembers being young enough to be in a crib, so about 1. It’s a very specific memory of his Dad making figure eights with his lit cigarette. Also he didn’t have siblings yet so he couldn’t be older than 15 months.

R23 Interesting...your memory makes me think of Tori Amos’s song “Jackie’s Strength.” She was born a few months before the assassination...the song is an assemblage of memories that make up a patchwork version of her life.

“A Bouvier till her wedding day

Shots rang out, the police came

Mama laid me on the front lawn

And payed for Jackie’s strength

Feeling old by 21

Never thought my day would come

My bridesmaids getting laid

I prayed for Jackie’s strength.”

I have a few memories of singing for my grandmother and crawling through this big tube-toy we had (It was like a giant slinky wrapped in a plastic sheet) at age two. My memories don't become more than a few disjointed moments until I was staying at my aunt's house during the day, which would have been when I was four, before starting nursery school.

I was under 3 years, in my crib. My mother said goodnight and said she didn't want to hear a peep from me. As she got to the door, I said 'peep'. (I was obnoxiously precocious; I'm nicer now). Next thing I remember is being in the first grade; my mother opened the hallway linen closet just as I came out of my room and I got a great big old black eye. I was pissed.

I was about 4-5 when we had an accident. For years I thought my father had hit a car that had either hit a cop or he pushed the car into the cop. I remember being on the floor in the backseat crying for no reason. I found out just 5 or 6 years ago (45 years later) that my Father actually was the one that hit the officer. The officer was working an accident. My mother and sister were shocked I did not know he was the cop hitter.

r23, r16 here, I also remember JFK's death and being mad that I couldn't watch cartoons because of the funeral coverage on TV.

The first one I have was me eating wild strawberries in our front lawn. My parents confirmed that it was a house we lived in when I was about 3 years old. The second one was my father teaching me how to pet a cat the right way. I have no idea what age I was, but obviously young enough to be petting its fur backwards. It is weird the random things that stay with you, and everything else you forget.

I was two or three years old, and my parents were building a new house so they got an apartment until it was finished. I remember the entrance, and the hallway, but my most vivid memory was of Mrs. Kraus, an ancient woman across the hall who brought me a cookie every day. Very sweet.

I have this memory of this very large examination room. Much of everything was metallic. I remember seeing the baby scale, and either I thought it or the nurse said it, but I was just a bit too big to be weighed with it.

In this other memory, I'm pretty sure I was three when I was walking with my mom in a hallway and passed a room full of singing children. I thought to myself that they were a little too old for me to belong there. I've always been hung up on ages and numbers.

My earliest memory was lying in my crib waiting for my bottle at around a year or so of age, and the absolute joy I experienced when it came.

When I was three, I remember while my parents watching the news where they were announcing Jackie Kennedy had married Aristotle Onassis, I turned to them and said, "Well, sewer water will always find its own level."

I always believed I remembered a diaper change, on my back and holding some playing cards above my head and dropping them on me in a playful way. It’s a persistent memory, but I can’t imagine an infant or toddler holding playing cards, so I’m uncertain if it actually happened, or if I’m just remembering a diaper change in general.

My earliest memory is of being in the dark, jumping up and down on the couch for fun. The reason it's stayed with me was my mother had locked my drunk father out of the apartment and pushed all the furniture up against the door so he couldn't get in. This was in February-they separated later that month-and I wouldn't be 3 until August. Fun times :)

OP, claiming that because you have no memories before four no one else can have them is silly.

I remember diaper changes and being fed with a bottle (my mother couldn't breast feed). I remember the different touches and "techniques" of my mother the three grandmothers (one adopted) in bathing and washing me. I potty trained myself (it just seemed sensible) by the time I was 15 months, so I had to be younger than that.

I have quick memories of being in a crib, taking a bottle, and sitting in a high chair. My first memory I can tie to an event was the high school graduation of my uncle. I had just turned four and can remember us driving to the school, parts of the ceremony and then visiting with the grandparents afterward.

Not my first memory, but a vivid one.

I was in kindergarten and was playing on the monkey bars. This enormous girl with Downs Syndrome pulled me off of the bars and punched me several times. I can still picture her in the horrendous red and white vertical-striped pants she wore every day. It was then I learned that vertical stripes can only help so much.

I remember walking on the wood floor of a Woolworth or Grant store (why yes, I am old) and picking up a delicious piece of popcorn for a snack. My older sister and father made me to drop it. I must have been a toddler.

I also have a friend who remembers being mad that the cartoons weren't on TV at the time of the JFK assassination.

I was young enough to still be in some type of crib or play pen. So 2-3 years old. It was at my grandparents’ house. I was lying in the crib and my grandma was singing Away in a Manger to me.

I remember an elderly man babysitting me in our apartment - that only happened within 6 months after I was born. I remember my parents going out the door and leaving me with the babysitter and it was absolutely emotionally devastating. Like if an adult saw their partner walk out on them. That level of devastation. Because of this, if i ever had a baby I would never, ever, EVER leave them when they were crying for me to stay.

R39 LOL That one is a classic.

I was around 1 1/2. I remember walking down the sidewalk with my cousin, who was around 18, I think, and her holding my hand. I also remember later that day she was hot and started fanning herself and exclaiming, “whew!” I imitated her and she thought it was the greatest thing. I also remember being around 3 and going to Disneyland. Pirates of the Caribbean scared me. I was a pain and cried the whole ride. I also remember being mesmerized by It’s a Small World.

Walking 200 km from my village to Kalma camp, under the hot desert sun, after the Janjaweed hacked Mama and Papa to pieces.

No R45, I can remember an earlier memory.

It was my first commercial shoot with Sally Struthers. Everyone here is so mean to her, but I thought she was lovely. She took a flyswatter out of her purse and slapped them all off of my eyes.

And she shared the lettuce from her BLT.

Earliest memory, I must've been 2ish, is me lying in a crib and dreaming of the black sheep in the field behind our house and also playing with a toy that looked like a TV that you wound up and it played Row Row Row your Boat while a picture rolled across the screen. A few years ago we drove by the house when in that town and I was surprised to see there is still a field behind it.

I also remember the first moon landing on TV (I was 4). I can remember coming off the hot backyard patio into the darkened living room and the TV being on and being vaguely aware of there being a man on the moon.

I remember closing my eyes while facing the sun and getting lost in the orange color. I also remember examining my tongue in a mirror. I was in the 2-3 age range.

I remember being in the hospital to get my tonsils out at age three. I went in on a Thursday night and came out sometime on Friday. It's the leaving part I remember. My grandmother was feeding me ice cream. I wasn't aware of how old I was at the time, or even of the concept of age, or days of the week. I was simply told I was three when I had my tonsils out on a Thursday.

My parents realized I could read when I was three, they told me. All I remember is picking things out at the grocery store, which is how they realized I could read. I said "Joy" or "Tide" or "bacon," or whatever. I don't remember a time before I could read. I realized when I got to kindergarten that most kids couldn't do this. I hated school, partly because of having to sit through everyone else's reading lessons. I tuned out early on.

I'm like OP; I remember things starting at age 4, but it's spotty, and then gets broader and broader obviously as I get older.

My sister remembers, or claims to remember, all sorts of stuff from when she was 2 and 3, and she's always asking you "don't you remember when ..." and I have no idea what she's talking about.

I was around 2 and 1/2. I know this because my mother was pregnant with my sister, who was born a few months less than three years after me.

Dad was driving Mom and me down Connecticut Avenue in D.C. to the national zoo. I was wearing my cowboy outfit. In front of one of the large apartment buildings, I got sick and threw up iin my cowboy hat.

Something interesting I read about memories like this--when you dredge them up, you donn't necessarily dredge up the actual memory--you dredge up what you remembered the last time you dredged up the memory, with whatever adjustments you might have made. So you might end up inadvertently adding some meaning to the memory, or enhancing it for entertainment benefits.

I'm sure I remember the apartment buildings. When I was a teenager and ventured into DC, I recognized them. There are photos of me in the cowboy outfit. I think this memory was real.

My grandmother staying with me while my mother was in the hospital giving birth to my younger sister. It was mid-December and she did a lot of xmas decorating, with my "help." Also remember my parents bringing my sister home from the hospital and the slow realization that they were not planning to send her back when I grew tired of her. This was about six weeks before my second birthday.

I have three very vivid memories from early childhood. The first is playing with a matchbox car on a rug in the basement of the house where we lived when I was born to age 3 and a half, so it had to be earlier than that. The memory isn't long; just a few seconds in which I realized that real cars couldn't drive on carpet. The second is moving day, when my mother's friend helped her move kitchen equipment in her Thunderbird (when they were huge hardtop coupes with enormous engines), and I sat on the console between the bucket seats because the back seat was stuffed with overflow from the trunk.

The final memory I did not realize was earlier than these two until about 10 years ago when visiting my mother, chatting about my earliest memories and recalled this light mint-green room that only had a single bed and nightstand. The windows had large horizontal blinds which were slightly open and bright sunlight filtered through. There was funny singing in the distance. The distinguishing feature was a big dark red blotch on the light colored floor. When I recounted this memory, my mother said it couldn't be possible that I could remember this room, my grandmother's bedroom in an apartment she rented when I was less than a year old, and moved out 6 months later because she hated it. Mom filled in the details, incredulous that I could remember it so vividly: the music was grandma's neighbor who sang music from her home country as she hung laundry out to dry, and the blotch was a juice stain caused when my grandmother knocked over a glass she'd rested on the nightstand, wrecking the carpet (which my mother had to pay for). There's nothing particular about the memory, so vivid it's like it just happened, but at the same time like looking at a painting, perfectly still.

I remember coming home from the hospital after my birth.

well, R40, the woolworth's and grant's stores were next to each other in my neighborhood growing up. with my first camera i took pictures of the grant's on fire.

I can remember some things from when I was two years old. My mother to this day is still surprised I can remember that far back. It's just a few mundane things, but I would have been two at the time they happened. I definitely remember a lot more from when I was three years old.

Escaping my crib and my mother being perplexed as how I did it.

I remember being 2 at day care and a woman trying to feed me food like an aero plane. My sister came on to check on me. I remember other things from that day care too like watching tv but may have been older. I would have had to be 2 as my sister was at school at 5. I could have been a bit older? But not 3

My first very strong memory is being about 2.5 (definitely not 3 yet), and my father took us to go get a new puppy. (The other one had been run over, but I don't specifically remember that dog, and I doubt my younger sister and I were told what actually happened to him.) Picking out the new puppy (a Labrador), I remember being under these people's carport and the puppy running down the stairs from inside their house. We all loved on her while she licked us, and then we brought her home in my father's little MG convertible. Libby (her name) lived until I was 16...she didn't have the easiest life, but she was a good dog and always very protective of us children.

I'm not sure exactly how old I was. My mother had taken me out in my stroller and a large dog trotted up to me and licked my face. I howled like a banshee. For quite a while afterward, my mother had a difficult job getting me past that area.

I remember taking baths in the kitchen sink, and loving it. I must have been real young.

I remember the first apartment my parents lived in after marrying, and their first TV. A big Phillips console with the speaker below the picture tube. We moved from that apartment when I was about 2.

Medical events are memorable.

Like others here, I remember all the commotion in the house to prepare for the new baby that was set to arrive shortly after I turned three.

Several months later, at four, being “abandoned” in the hospital to recover from a serious illness.

Cried hysterically in my hospital bed when I realized my parents were leaving me behind.

Medical events are memorable.

Like others here, I remember all the commotion in the house to prepare for the new baby that was set to arrive shortly after I turned three.

Several months later, at four, being “abandoned” in the hospital to recover from a serious illness.

Cried hysterically in my hospital bed when I realized my parents were leaving me behind.

I have a distinct memory of asking my mom why actress Barbara Colby wasn't on "Phyllis" anymore, and mom casually saying, "Oh, she was murdered" to me. Really messed me up. But I couldn't have been more than 3 years old at the time so I have absolutely no idea how I remember it.

Also big shout out to my psycho mom for telling a 3yo kid that their favorite actress was murdered like it was no big deal.

I was 3, we were moving to a new house, and I was carrying a pillow from the the moving truck into the house. A neighbor leaned over the fence and asked me how old I was. "I'm three," I said and held up three fingers. That's my first cognizant memory.

I don't know how old I was, but I must have been quite young. I have a very vivid, but short recollection of being in the kitchen and standing next to my mother as she handed me a bottle from the counter.

It's a fleeting memory, but it's my first one.

Vividly remember Grandma and elderly neighbor sitting in our living room watching Kennedy assassination news, crying loudly and saying the rosary, I was 3.

I was 3 and remember the car ride home from the hospital when my youngest sister was born. My batshit crazy grandmother was calling her "chicken feet".

[quote]I remember being taken to the hospital kicking and screaming because I had a 104 degree temperature at the age of three. But no memory of returning home from that experience.

There’s a reason for that.

I have a memory of jumping in a pool and not knowing how to swim. It was at a backyard gathering with aunts and cousins present. I was no more than 3 years old, and I just spontaneously jumped into the deep end, because it looked very inviting, and remember the sensation of sinking in the water and thinking "huh. this isn't what I expected at all". I don't remember feeling scared or panicked while it was happening, just surprised. I'm told my dad immediately jumped in and pulled me out, but I don't remember that at all. I might have been frightened by all the adults freaking out over it, because I developed a fear of swimming pools and they had to give me swimming lessons to get over it.

When I was 4, my family moved to a new house. But I have dozens of memories from the years we spent at the previous one. A few winter scenes, but most from warmer weather days outdoors. Some from nights, but most from days. But lots of memories of people and places.

I vividly remember being held down kicking and screaming over my mom's lap while being force-given an enema by both my parents in the bathroom of our beachside house, which we moved out of when I was 18 months old. I also remember most of the hospital details of the tonsillectomy I underwent at about that same time. Strangely, I'd never, to my knowledge, eaten baked custard in my life, but when I was a teenager I was given some at a friend's house and INSTANTLY recognized it as something I'd been given at the hospital after the tonsillectomy. I couldn't even eat a bite of it and nearly threw up just from the remembered taste.

R61 You were 11.

bump

I remembering fearing the vacuum cleaner; and trying to escape the crib; and being comforted by my mother and an orange poodle nightlight. I remember hating my father picking me up because I was sure was going to drop me on my head. So I would fight him and he would drop me. Actually I have hundreds of memories from before 4. Granted a few were "enhanced" by home movies. But I don't remember now an early trip we took to the dunes, but I did then because when I was 4 my parents were arguing about what exit to take and I told them and they didn't believe me and it turned out I was right. That sense of knowing where I was in space stayed with me and it may be why they let me go places at a younger age than my sisters (that, or just plain sexism).

I was about three. I have a memory of sitting on the kitchen floor in a pile of flour into which I had peed.

My mother confirmed this memory. She said that early one morning I emptied a bag of flour on the floor, peed on it, and when she discovered me, I said ‘I’m baking a cake, Mummy.’

It’s clear I had seen her mixing ingredients together when she was baking and I decided I was going to bake a cake myself — hey, I’ve got flour, I’ve got liquid, away we go!

I have memories from two years old. I remember standing in my crib gazing out my bedroom window at my father's silhouette through the window of his backyard workshop.

I also remember watching my mother brushing my older sister's hair. In my memory she's about four years old. She's three years older than me so I was very young. My mother would brush her hair and making little squeaking sounds as she pretended to be brushing little creatures out of her wild and crazy hair.

I remember standing next to my sister in front of my grandfather, who was dying. He was within a few months of dying and I was able to talk, so he wanted to chat with me a bit and see who I might be.

Based on when he died, that would have put me at almost but not quite three years old.

I also remember making Christmas cookies with my mom and sisters, which was timewise probably about a month after that other memory.

I wouldn't put too much stock in what a child says.

Children are....well, rather unreliable.

Three years old playing in my front yard in a big mud puddle and a hose with my brother.

I remember watching ships at sea on the TV at my grandparents’ house. It was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was two years old at the time.

I definitely have a 'memory' of being in my pram (it was one of those old fashioned carriage-style ones) and looking up at my mother, which would make me very young if true. I say 'memory' because I realise that memory is not reliable and what I think I remember could actually just be a false memory.

Also, at the same time of the memory I shared at R9, I can remember my Grandma having an old fashioned sewing machine which had a metal piece at the bottom the same size as the small table top above it which the sewing machine rested on - that metal piece was a pedal and the sewing machine was manual and someone sewing would work that pedal constantly to make the sewing machine go - I remember that I used to go directly to the sewing machine every time I went to my Grandma's and work that pedal with my arms just to get it going - it was fun.

Around this time, I am told by my six years older sister that we were playing right next to a huge pile of pebbles as big as a two story house when the rocks began to slide and completely covered me, my sister having to dig me out. Also told that we had a giant female Mastiff named "Queenie" to whom I'd snuggle against and go to sleep - both these things I have absolutely no recollection

[quote] I remember my 3rd birthday party and have clear memories of my horrible Grandma who died a few months later.

I remember my 3rd birthday as well (no party). I was riding in a car, back seat. My mom was driving and she told me I turned 3 today. In those days, no car seats, no seat belts. Kids rode in the back seat, even if there there was a vacant front passenger seat.

I've always had an oddly specific memory of riding in the backseat of my parents' car while Van McCoy's "The Hustle" played on the radio (though I didn't know the song title/artist until years later, obviously). I even remember the neighborhood we were driving through and the buildings. Not sure how old I was, but pretty young - 2 or 3.

I remember my grandma coming to stay while my mom was in the hospital giving birth to my little sister, so that was a couple of months after my third birthday. Grandma was a Bible thumper (no wonder my dad became an atheist) and regaled me with graphic descriptions of the crucifixion, which terrified me. So I started having nightmares, just in time for the new baby's homecoming -- lots of wailing all night, from both of us.

I remember various things from before that but don't know how old I was for those earlier memories, and how much I'm "remembering" what I've been told about events.