What is your earliest memory?

I am in a high chair facing my parents and their friends who are surrounding me at the dining room table for my first birthday party.

Getting a bath in the kitchen sink by my father. I think I was maybe 1 year old. It is just a fragment of a memory.

My mother crying because they didn’t get the house she really wanted — I tried to comfort her to no avail and then I started crying too.

Get real people. No one can remember their first birthday. There has never been a case where people remember events before 2 years old.

Was 3 yrs old, a thunderstorm at night sending multicolored raindrops sliding down the picture window, reflecting off the streetlight approx 100 yards from the house. The colors were beautiful.

I was three in Tucson - we had a tree growing right next to the house and there was a kind of little cave behind it. I was sitting in there.

I remember my dad carrying me through the snow, and into my aunt’s house, where she was sitting there with a little baby, my cousin. I was 11 months old when she was born. I do realize that could have been a dream or something that I’ve morphed into a memory.

We moved from one house when I was 2 and a half. I remember a lot of things from that house that I know are real memories, including the day we moved.

I forgot to say, I was maybe 3 1/2. No memories before that.

My dad won me a generic Snoopy stuffed animal at the carnival-the kind with the little round styrofoam inside. I loved it so much. Later I created a song and dance called the Snoopy Hula with it. Such a little fagula I was!

My dad pulling up to the house in a brand new '59 Chevy and all the excitement of running outside to see it and all the neighbors came over to look at it. I had just turned four and I realized right away that new cars = excitement. I've been into cars ever since

It was dark, warm, wet. A sudden burst of light, an intense pressure like I'd never felt before, father dressed in white, pulls me forward, mother bites the cord….

I think some of you are confusing photos you've seen or stories you've heard for memories. No one is remembering their first birthday party.

Jumping up and down on my parent’s bed screaming about the Mary Tyler Moore Show. I must have been around 2 1/2.

I know for a long time I was upset I couldn’t reach doorknobs or see over the teller window at the bank.

My mother says I was 2 - we were on a holiday to New Orleans to visit relatives, and I remember sitting on top of a man's shoulders and walking down a sidewalk while the Mardi Gras parade floats went by. Then he took me to his office in what I thought a very tall building, with an elevator, and he showed me his office with wooden panelling that was very shiny.

Oh the man turned out to be my great-uncle-in-law, who I would find out many years later was a kind of a con artist who pretended to be a big shot. (this would have been in 1958 lol - yes very elder gay)

car accident, being pried from vehicle and subsequent trip to emergency room at 2 yrs old.

I was about 18 months old, watching my dad lace my new sister into her club foot boots in her crib. I know it’s a real memory because there were no pictures of her in those boots.

Putting together those foam alphabet puzzle blocks on the floor of my grandmas living room.

3 years old. My family was moving and I wanted to help so dad gave me a pillow to carry into the new house. A neighbor saw me and asked something like 'how old are you, sweetie?' and I remember holding up 3 fingers and telling her I was 3.

[quote]Get real people. No one can remember their first birthday. There has never been a case where people remember events before 2 years old.

Not true R4. I remember being 1 year old and shoving a whole orange segment into my mouth while I was in the highchair. I choked on it and had to be held upside down to get the orange out. I remember seeing the orange segment sitting there on the floor after I choked it up.

I have many memories from between probably 1.5 years and 3 years. Things that couldn't have been told to me. For example, when I was 2 or do, I was at the babysitter's house -- a woman in her 40s -- and her cleaner was over. She was dusting, and the sunlight was pouring in the window, and the dust scattered in the rays. I was transfixed. The cleaning lady noticed and smiled.

And I remember certain things about the layout of the house.

I also remember a dream I had when I was about 3. It was a nightmare, so I guess why it's always stayed with me.

I remember when I found out my mom was going to have twins (my younger brothers) and I wanted to name them Jack and Jill (back then they couldn't tell the sex of babies until pretty late in the pregnancy, I was 3 1/2 when they were born, so I was probably just over 3.

My mom being pregnant with my sister and asking her if the food she ate landed on the baby's head. I would have been about four at the time.

[quote] My family was moving and I wanted to help so dad gave me a pillow to carry into the new house.

MARY!!! me if you will, but that’s an incredibly sweet story.

Marilyn Monroe’s death. I know... MARY! I was three.

Sitting on the bright red carpet in the living room while my mother tidied the kitchen. That's my earliest memory, just my mother tidying and the colour and feel of the carpet, that it was a sunny summer day because part of the memory is my mom complaining about the flies coming in the door. I would have been 1 or 2 months shy of my third birthday.

It's interesting how so many of my very early memories are dreams, as well. And memories that old have a dreamlike quality anyway so in emotional terms the memories of dreams and the memories of reality don't feel significantly different.

There is also a memory from when I would have been 3, of walking in the woods with my mother and grandfather and coming across a dead pigeon my grandfather had shot. To this day I can still feel the pure horror of seeing that. It utterly freaked me out.

No matter how much you try to disprove things with links R27, some of us DO actually remember things from when we were 1-2 years old. Sorry you don't like it, but that's reality. I told my parents the story of the choking incident I described as R20, and my mom was surprised I remembered it but said it was absolutely true. They were freaked out because they were young parents so they remembered it vividly.

Yeah, I'm not sure I buy that any study can say definitively that not a single human being has any memories before X age. I'm sure there are patterns and norms but I don't know about dismissing outliers automatically.

Sitting on a metal floor heating vent in the living room and my mom came in the front door. I see that she had no eyelashes, eyebrows, and a lot of hair in front was missing. She had bandages on one ear. There are no photographs of this and it was not until I was much older (10-11 years old) that I asked my parents why I kept seeing this in nightmares. It turns out that Mom was disposing of paint thinner, it caught fire, and burned her face and one side of her head. This happened a few months shy of my second birthday. I used to have this image in my sleep a lot when I was little. After my parents explained that the scene in my mind actually happened, I never dreamed about it again. Weirdness.

My great-grandparents had a mohair rug in the living room of a house that my great-grandmother sold after her husband died when I was three. I distinctly remember developing a rash on my arm after playing on that scratchy thing.

I remember being in my walker. Probably a year and a half old

I do too. But that was only yesterday.

[quote]As many of these memories dated before the age of 2 and younger, the authors suggest that these fictional memories are based on remembered fragments of early experience – such as a pram (or stroller), family relationships and feeling sad – and some facts or knowledge about their own infancy or childhood which may have been derived from photographs or family conversations.

[quote]Akhtar and colleagues found that fictional very early memories were more common in middle-aged and older adults and about 4 in 10 of this group have fictional memories for infancy.

I counted my newborn sister's toes. I was three years old at the time. Now she is freaking out about turning 60 years old next month.

I remember seeing ships on an ocean on television, for days. It was the Cuban-missile crisis. I was only two years old.

I was about 3 and I was mad at my mom for some reason and she was helping me get dressed to go to some school sporting event I think my older sister was in. I remember my mom was helping me put on a turtleneck and I remember the sensation of being suffocated for 2 seconds while my head was stuck in the neck part of the turtle neck. That's it.

I was sitting in the sun parlor and I saw thousands of tiny pieces of paper falling from the sky. I ran to tell my mother. She came back with me to the sun parlor and said, "that's not paper; it's snow," and suddenly the paper turned to snow and I couldn't understand how I had thought it was paper.

I don't know how old I was, but probably around three.

I was a little over two years old; my Aunt Mary (I know) was visiting us, and she went into the bathroom. I stood outside the closed door calling her name and asking to be to let in. My mother was a cold fish and Mary was a warm, loving presence.

Mine is exactly like r1 s.

Probably two or three years old. I am outside, in the backyard behind my childhood home, and there is about six inches of fresh snow. I think my siblings are there, but I am not interacting with them because I am so focused on the sensations of the cold weather and the bright whiteness of the snow.

I have a memory of crawling off the spiral braided rug in our living room onto a cool tile floor. I made my way around to the side of our Zenith console television set, one of those with a record player at one end and a radio at the other. The wooden molding wasn't as close to the floor on the end, so I squeezed past it and went under the television set. There were 'dust bunnies' underneath there, close to the wall.

Moments later, my mom came into the living room, missed me, and started calling my name, looking for me. She became increasingly panicked, and at one point, even went out the front door, looking outside. I guess I was unable to call out to let her know where I was, so I simply struggled out from under the television at its opposite end. When she came back inside, she saw me, scooped me up and cried all over me, smothering me with hugs and kisses.

Nearly a decade later, when I recounted the memory to her, she told me that it had happened when I was six months old. I have other fragments of memories from around that time, but that one is my earliest complete memory.

I remember learning to walk and chasing a bee in my grandmother's flower garden.

My three sisters spraying their huge hair with Aqua Net and jostling for space in front of the bathroom mirror.

I have a distinct memory from when I was about two: the winter sun was streaming in through the living room and for some reason, surrounded by my parents’ spare, downmarket danish modern, that was the moment I understood I was a separate being - that people didn’t know my thoughts nor I theirs. It’s like my consciousness suddenly came online.

And one day you'll return to the hive consciousness.

Guess.

I have very vague fragments of memory that are from 2 1/2 years of age. One is being in a car on the driveway of our old house. We moved from that place when I was 2 1/2. I don't know why I have that persistent flash because nothing really happened then (that I'm aware of or was told about). I also recall an enamel container in the kitchen that my grandmother put bacon grease in. I don't remember stretches of memory until I was 4 to 4 1/2 years old. By the time I was in kindergarten, I had a remarkable memory of things that are quite detailed. My family and friends always say that I have a photographic memory but I don't really. I just have a very good memory for details. My parents would ask ME about past events when I was still a kid. Especially if they thought the other parent remembered it wrong.

Four years old with chicken pox on Christmas Day

Looking up at the juice cart in nursery school wondering what juice I wanted.

Running into the living room to plop down in front of the TV to watch the Banana Splits. Playing in the "jungle", which was actually 2 trees and some dirt in the center courtyard of our apartment complex. Age 3-4.

I remember at the age of 13 months lying in my bed waiting on my bottle to be brought to me and the absolute joy I experienced as soon as I get that nipple in my mouth. I'm 72 years old.

Being potty trained by my grandmother, 18 months old.

Just before my 4th birthday. Mom was on the kitchen phone telling someone my birthday was coming up.

I remember visiting my mom in the hospital after she gave birth to my younger sister. I was uninterested in the baby and wanted to turn on the TV. I was 2.5 years old.

I remember the day my little sister was brought home from the hospital. My mother placed her in my wobbly little arms and said it was my job to be a Big Boy now and help to protect her.

I told her if we were discussing "big" we should address the "elephant in the room" - HER, and the twenty-five lbs. she had to lose.

I was 30, living in her basement.

My grandma singing Away in the Manger to me. I was looking up at her from my crib, so I was very young. Probably around 2. It’s still my fav Christmas Song.

Puking in the car

R4 is definiteloy wrong. When I was 4 we were in teh car heading to a beach several hours away and I remembered going there and what exit to take. My parents didn't believe me and chose the wrong one. This was because I had been one and a half when we went there before. The only memory I have now before age two was assisted by a super 8 video of me taking my first steps. I can remember things not in the movie in fragments, but I couldn't remember anything if I didn't have the audio-visual aid. Now you might say those are misplaced fragments or that I made them up to go with the movie, but the location was not a place we would normally go on a regular basis so I'm not sure that I've made any of it up.

At age 2 years, 4 months I was dressed for Halloween in a red devil's outfit.

While leaving the house to go trick or treating with my two older sisters, the front gate closed abruptly and tore my tail off.

Dear gawd in heaven! What a totally traumatic experience! I started to cry! My costume was ruined!

My mother brought me inside and reattached the tail with a couple of safety pins.

I managed to compose myself and make it through the rest of the evening, but still, I remained upset and kept looking back at my butt to make sure my bent tail was still there.

I have several early memories, but I can’t tell which was the earliest. I know only that they occurred before I was 5 years old, based on the house in which they occurred.

One memory is of me sitting on the living room floor playing with a toy or game, when our neighbors’ son came over to visit. He was probably at least 10 or 12 years old, which of course seemed old to me. He was talking with my parents and then sat on the floor behind me with his legs out to both sides around me. His legs seemed so long! I remember feeling very safe and protected with his body around mine. I don’t know if it had any relationship with me becoming a gay man, but it stands out as one of my recollections from that time.

Standing in front of the TV and seeing Sandy Duncan in a Wheat Thins ad.

I have seen a pic of me in my mom's bed holding my stuffed Mickey Mouse. I remember what happened afterwards because I had an upset stomach, and my grandmother gave me a glass of beer to settle my stomach, and I threw up.

Age, I think four years old.

I had to be under 3 years old, but older than 2 years and four months.

My mother was changing my brother on a changing table. I picked up a hanger and stuck it in an electrical socket.

BIG. BLUE. SPARK.

Metal. Hanger.

I don't know how I'm alive.

[quote] Metal. Hanger.

Now THAT is the reason well known to you.