My earliest really solid memory was getting our first dog when I was about 3-4 years old. I remember odd bits and pieces from before then, but that’s probably the earliest thing I can conjur up in any significant detail. Things before that are just kind of brief flashes and glimpses with no real context, glimpses of preschool, Christmas, playing with different toys, etc. but I remember the days leading up to bringing her home very well, my mom finding a classified ad in the newspaper, she was advertised as a chocolate lab (she was white and gold, and maybe there was lab in her mix somewhere but that wouldn’t have been my first guess, didn’t matter once we met her, she meshed right into our family like she’d always been part of it)
Interestingly it’s also my sister’s earliest memory, she would have been about 2, so definitely a very important moment in both of our lives.
I was 3 and I was sitting on the floor at my grandparent’s house. My mom and her mom were hugging and crying because my grandpa had recently passed away.
I remember playing with a wire controlled car when I was about 3. It was a battery powered f1 style red car and it had yellow bumper wheels on the corners to allow it to not get stuck when it hit a wall. It had a ‘remote’ that was connected to the car by a short cable. It had 2 buttons, one to go forwards and one to go backwards. It could go straight backwards but it would go in a circle forwards. It had been a gift from my aunt and uncle and my father stepped on it to break it because it bothered him.
Second memory, I’m walking into the yard on a summer evening. I open the gate, look up, and then towards the entrance door. The fence is green but the paint is chipping because it crumbles under my fingers. The sky is all sunset colors; blue, purple, orange, and the sun is blocked by the great big apricot tree between the house and the garage.
I can remember learning to see in three dimensions - that what I was seeing was objects in space rather than simply different colored patches on a flat background. I think it was a big mistake because my vision has always been shit. Something clicked before it should have.
I was in my crib, holding the spindles and looking between them at the room around me.
My first conscious memory is of me gaining consciousness at age 3 or so. Everything before that are visual or tactile memories that are difficult to describe.
Anyway, when I had children myself, I suddenly remembered a lot more of those. Things that I never knew that I remembered somehow got recalled by watching my own child do the same things. So at age 40 I vividly and weirdly remembered what it’s like to be standing in a crib, holding and twisting the bannisters.
Tactile memories are weird. I’ve always enjoyed coming to my grandparents house later in life, because of the way the handles on the cupboards feel just the way they’re supposed to.
Around two years old, my mom fell and went into really early labor with my baby brother. Ambulance taking her away, lots of scared adults, I don’t have any other memories for a good two years after that one.
No idea at what age it was, but I remember refusing to get into a car my dad just bought because the new car could not “fly” like the old one. Quite the fantasy.
Back when I was 4 I was stuck to the 220 mains because 4 year old me was quite the idiot. My earliest memories were from the months after that where I’d have waking nightmares constantly. Like some AR horror game would suddenly take over and I’d just see this horror scene play out while I was just walking around the house during the day. It wasn’t anything super gruesome, but it was also by no means pleasant.
I remember being in the bathroom with my aunt when I was a little shy of turning 4.
She had been staying with us to help my mom with the kids, but had to leave the country as her temporary visa was expiring. I had grown quite attached to her, and the morning she left, she took pity on me and let me follow her around everywhere. Even into the bathroom. I also remember being at the airport and watching her plane take off. But my mom said it took weeks for me to accept that she was really gone and I kept looking for her around the apartment. I don’t remember that part.
Today, she lives a few hours away from me at nursing home. I plan to visit her around the new year.
1992; I’m two years old, and having an absolute blast running through the sheets my mom had put up out on the clothesline.
About a decade ago my mom and I were talking about early memories. It turns out she happened to have a disposable camera on her at the time, and there’s pictures of me, joyfully forming my earliest memory as a toddler.
I can recall being in the cot under the window in my parents room, but there is nothing else attached to that memory.
I can also very clearly recall being put onto the floor in the back of my dad’s dark blue side opening van, which had an orange tinted skylight, and crawling across the corrugated floor panel to pull myself up against the wheel arch - since this was evidently before i could walk - whilst my parents were talking just outside, and the van itself was parked across the road from the entrance to our garden.
However, apparently my dad never owned a van of that type, nor anything like it, and nor did anyone that either of my parents or my - significantly older - siblings are aware of. So despite the clarity and detail of that memory, I have doubts that it is at all real.
Earliest I can date is reading a newspaper about a significant event when I was not quite 4. I remember having to ask my mother for help with some of the words. I think I have earlier memories than that - like my mother teaching me to read, but I can’t tie them to a specific time.
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