BS: Your First Memory?

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: GUEST,IBOB
Date: 11 Jul 07 - 11:41 AM

Being sat on santas knee in binns at middlesbrough,about three year old.That big fat scary red git scared the living daylight out of me. My mother has the picture to prove it.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: GUEST,YWH Brahmacronos
Date: 11 Jul 07 - 06:18 AM

I remember a very bright light- very hot, particles forming all around me- suddenly nearly all the positrons and antiprotons disappearing- then the inflation, everythimng blew up huge- gas condensing into clouds, then igniting fusion reactions under the sheer pressure at the core. I think that was about 100 billion universes ago, but I've lost count. Anyway, it could have been a dream, it could all have been a dream.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: JennyO
Date: 11 Jul 07 - 04:23 AM

My first real memory was of the day we moved house from Parkes to Goulburn (which means I was about 2 or 3). I remember sitting on the floor in an empty back room of the house we were about to leave. The afternoon sun was streaming in and there was a blowfly buzzing.

As for an early dream - not sure exactly when it was, but probably around 5. I dreamed I was in the backyard in a sandpit and the sand was draining away through the bottom, like a giant sieve, and you could see just a black hole underneath. I had that dream a few times, then moved on to other recurring dreams.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 11 Jul 07 - 02:21 AM

That's interesting, Linda. I have never thought of that. I remember a recurring dream - nightmare, really- when I was 7 or so but I'll have to think of any earlier ones.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Linda Goodman Zebooker
Date: 11 Jul 07 - 01:55 AM

The first dreams I remember were when I was just two. One was in black and white. I climbed up some wooden steps and turned on the bathroom faucets, but fire came out. (I had recently been hospitalized because I was scalded by a coffeepot at my grandmother's house - I don't remember that at all) My other dream was walking through sort of a fair with rows and rows of long strings of beautiful brightly colored beads hanging down.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Becca72
Date: 10 Jul 07 - 01:13 PM

I have several distinct memories, all from around the age of 2, though I have no idea which ones came first.

one is of dropping acorns down a hole in the front lawn that I had seen a chipmunk come in and out of. I spent days helping him collect acorns, always waiting until he was gone because I was afraid of hitting him in the head. I was crushed when my sister, 12 years older, told me he wouldn't eat my acorns because they smelled like "people".

I also remember finding a dead rat in our yard and for some reason thought he needed a last Hoorrah and pulled him around in my snow sled (it was the middle of summer) for quite a long time. I don't remember what happened after his ride concluded, though.

I also remember asking my father why there were no blue snakes around, because I liked the color blue at the time. Like any good father would, he wanted to give me what I was asking for so we got a can of blue spray paint out of the garage and went snake hunting. Found one, too. I remember laughing as the poor bastard slithered off into the brush with a bright blue line down his back.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 10 Jul 07 - 12:57 PM

I have an early memory that doesn't make a lot of sense. My grandmother lived in a house in a sort of cul-de-sac at the end of which was a brick wall. My memory is of viewing the night sky above the wall. The stars were out and there was a constellation in the shape of a wheelbarrow (in fact there may have been a wheelbarrow in the sky).

... it was probably a dream ...

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Joe_F
Date: 09 Jul 07 - 10:26 PM

When I was two, we lived in Florida, and there was a grapefruit tree in the yard. My father would pick grapefruits up off the ground and throw them up into the tree. Sometimes they wouldn't come down, and I particularly liked that.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: frogprince
Date: 09 Jul 07 - 09:07 PM

There's now way I can be sure which of several memories came first. I know this one had to be very early. Apparently my sister, 6 years older, and I had just had a bath in the old galvanized washin' tub. Either my mother or sister said something about "parading around naked". I don't think I had sorted out how to speak in sentences yet.
I started chasing my sister around, patting her on her bare butt, saying (or trying to say) "naked parade, naked parade..."
    (God knows, it may have been a prophetic moment in more ways than one...)

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: GUEST, Eb
Date: 09 Jul 07 - 07:22 PM

my memories, Mrs. Duck, also stem from traumatic events. For instance, the memory I have of the car trip when I was 8 months old evidently comes from discomfort. My mother said as soon as I was released from the car in the evenings I scooted everywhere, happy as a lark. And every morning when I had to get back in the car I cried.

The memory of me as an 11-month-old gazing at the pile of bedcovers also has a driving force. My mother said that I was forbidden to touch the covers because I loved to get on the pile and 'waller' around on it.

I don't remember that, of course. I prefer to think of myself as perfect. *g*

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 09 Jul 07 - 04:32 PM

I have a very vivid memory of being on a tube train in a pushchair and the doors closing. Only years later did I relate this memory to my mother who advised that at the age of around 10 months I was taken on a train by a young neighbour who neglected to put on the brake so that as the doors closed and the train lurched I was thrown forwards and sustained a nasty bump on the head - presumably why I remember.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Jul 07 - 03:31 PM

Since you've asked: The first memory, and a very vivid memory it is, still---- the first one I'm sure of --- was in 1946.---I was five years old. The house was full of people and every light was on when I awoke even though it was early morning. Everyone was talking at once when I stumbled half asleep into the living-room. Then my mother tearfully told me my father was dead.-- To calm me, I guess, she also told me that 'probably God must've needed him more than we did.' The keystone was pulled out of my life then. I shut down, and as a result, flunked kindergarten!

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Jul 07 - 12:43 PM

Kendall, that's what I think too. And it is demonstrated all around us, not just in those who become famous.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: HouseCat
Date: 09 Jul 07 - 11:39 AM

Sitting in the fireplace in the summertime, it was marble and I guess it felt cool and my mother said I loved sitting in it. I was less than 2. Next memory is lying in bed and looking out the window at the moon. My sister's transistor radio was on and it was the Doors singing "Light My Fire". Maybe 3ish.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: kendall
Date: 09 Jul 07 - 07:59 AM

I believe in reincarnation. It's the only thing that makes sense. Can anyone believe that Mozart, Beethoven, Segovia etc. just popped into this life with no talent, like most of us? No way. They had a head start.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: The PA
Date: 09 Jul 07 - 03:53 AM

My first memory was of sitting on the floor in the hall way of the house where I was born and someone had come to buy my pram. I remember the woodwork was varnished and the floor was large black and white square tiles (similar to those we sometimes see in 10 Downing Street, though I dont think that was the house !!!!!). I was crying and saying that it was 'my pram', someone had given me a large spoon to hold and I was tapping it on the floor. I was less than two at the time.

I have recently checked this out with my mom and she remembers it well because the girl who came to buy the pram came from her home town. (We had moved back to the UK from Ireland by then). She remembered my dad giving me the spoon to play with, and she was horrified as it was a large antique silver serving spoon and she though I would do some damage with it.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 09 Jul 07 - 03:20 AM

I remember my parents throwing me up and catching me..
not very high or anything, but enough that I was frightened.
the second early memory being in a stroller and being shown off by my mom, to some of her friends.. One woman who looked down at me and cooed
was blond and beautiful, and I remember thinking 'gee I wish that was my mother'.

Of course Ive never told my mom that story, no-one could take her place anyway.. I have to young daughters right now - one who is 2 1/2 and the other is 7months and often wonder how much theyll remember. Maia the younger one already has quite a lot of awareness - especially of people and objects around her. And Anna the older one speaks in full sentences and is intensely aware of the world around her- She points out planes before any of us hears them (or pays attention to the sound) as well as a number of other things such as clothing or shoes one is wearing.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Rowan
Date: 09 Jul 07 - 02:24 AM

Although I had posted this a few hours ago it seems to have disappeared; here 'tis again.

The earliest I can date with any certainty was when I climbed onto a box to watch my mother preparing a meal. She was standing at the kitchen bench and I had propped the box in front of the stove, which was electric and had coils on the top above the oven. One of the coils was bright red and at eye level; my eyes were glued onto it. I reached out my hand but the coil was too hot for my hand to get too close. At that point I became aware of my mother watching me like a hawk and I climbed back down. We left that house ("Ravenswood", in Ravenswood Ave, Ivanhoe) when I was about 18 months old. Apparently my mother had been out in the back yard hanging out the laundry when she suddenly (as mothers do) became "aware" that something was wrong. She happened to look up to the roof of the (double storied) house; there was me, at 18 months old, crawling out across the tiles having climbed up from a window. At my 21st (attended by all my rockclimbing mates) she recounted this to them.

The possible relationship between language and memory has intrigued me since about 1964. I had a very strong memory of standing on a hilltop on my grandfather's dairy farm in South Gippsland. I was part of a family group that had been out rabbiting and someone asked "What's the time?" "Nine o'clock" was the reply. In the memory I have a clear vision that the sun was still above the horizon; about half a handspan, in adult speak. Much much later I became aware that this memory was impossible because the sun never set later than 7.30pm in southern Victoria.

In 1964 I was part of an ecology excursion to the mangroves of Westernport Bay, also in southern Victoria. Sitting in the boat on our return we were having a discussion about the likelihood of Victoria introducing Daylight Saving, already used in Tasmania for a couple of summers. Our supervisor (Dave Ashton, the Eucalyptus regnans king) said "During the War they had 2 hour Daylight Saving." Unbidden, my recollection of the rabbiting memory flashed through my mind as suddenly explicable.

So, why did I recall it? Was it because it was so impossible? How could I have known it was impossible? How could I have recalled it unless I had "language"? You can bet I never mentioned it to anyone before 1964 because it would have made me appear stupid. And I was mightily impressed that its explanation leapt into my mind so suddenly (literally a few milliseconds) after Dave's comment. Some of Life's little mysteries.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Jul 07 - 12:35 AM

I know that somewhere on the 'Cat I've recounted a conversation I had with a kid barely 3. Maybe not even 3 yet- I know that when he was 2 years old he sang perfectly on pitch (-and his parents said he'd been doing it since he was a year old.)

From time to time Ben spoke of the things he used to do when he "was a big man", including playing guitar (His dad is a guitar player and singer)

Then one day he said that he used to have an airplane. (Mind you, this is Alaska- a place where a good number of people have their own planes and even more have pilot licenses. Nothing so surprising in that)

He said, 'When I was a big man, I had an airplane. Not a big one.'

Humoring him, I said, Oh, that was nice.

'Uh huh,' he said. 'But it crashed. It burned.'

Oh, I said, that was scary. What happened to you?

And he said matter of factly, 'They couldn't get me out in time.'

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Janie
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 11:16 PM

re: prebirth memories - I am a psychotherapist. I have often wondered how my son might have been affected from sitting through so many psychotherapy sessions en utero.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Janie
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 11:05 PM

Probably around 2. The sound of a train passing in the night, and it's whistle as it approached the crossing near our house.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Bee
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 10:58 PM

Not my memory, but that of a four year old girl I worked with in public childcare. Her older brother was off with his group on a swimming trip. She was sitting beside me drawing and chatting.
"I used to be a good swimmer." she said casually.
"Oh?" I said
"Yes. I used to swim out to the island"
"What island was that, now?"
"Oh, the island. I used to swim there and swim back."
"I see.", I said, noting the hair raising a bit on my arms. "Why did you stop swimming to the island?"
"Oh well... one day I swam out to the island and I just didn't come back. Is it snack time soon? I'm hungry."

Note: I am an avowed agnostic, and though I enjoy the idea of reincarnation, I don't for one second believe in it. But that is pretty much the spookiest conversation I ever had with a young child.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 07:21 PM

Susan, - and Donuel - if you'd like to talk about it, I'd be interested.

The little son of a friend of mine said drowsily when his mother was singing him to sleep with an old song she had almost forgotten, I remember that song. It was long, long ago. You know, when I was still inside you...

And then he wafted away to sleep.

I don't have any clear memories of that period of time. However, I DO remember when I *knew* more than I do now.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 05:03 PM

My earliest memory is prebirth, but since people don't tend to believe me I don't tend to talk about it.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 04:14 PM

What's wrong, Lassie? :)

Good for you, Kendall- and for us.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: kendall
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 03:48 PM

I remember seeing a neighbor's barn burn down after being struck by lightening. My brother who was about 2 slept through it and my parents wouldn't wake him. I was no more than three or four.

Then when I was 3, I remember climbing down inside a rock lined well and being rescued by a passing neighbor. If it hadn't been for the family dog I would still be there. He stopped a neighbor and lured him to the well.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 02:38 PM

I seem to remember reading something to that effect, George. It was quite clearly reasoned - and of course I immediately dropped the knowledge. :)

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 02:09 PM

My guess, Ebbie, is that you absorbed a template, into which you were later able to drop pertinent knowledge, like the word "green" matching the colour you remember.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 12:51 PM

I'm glad to see some early memories catch fire here! So often, people seem sure that they are not possible.

I have a question though. My second clear memory is of when I was no more than 11 months old (That's the age I was when we moved out of that house).

I am standing in the doorway of a small narrow bedroom- to my right at the end of the room is a window- and a bed.

In front of me is a pile of bedcovers. The top one is green. How did I know that?

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 12:49 PM

I can vividly remember Christmas when I was only five months old. People say that I would have been too young to remember, but I can recall it distinctly. I remember being in my crib and my parents and my aunt & uncle looking over the railing at me. I also remember my mother picking me up and taking me in the living room to see the Christmas tree.   I don't remember much else, although there is a photograph of me looking at a Teddy Bear that day. The crib memory is very strong.   I also have memories of being pushed about in a stroller.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: GUEST,banjoman
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 12:36 PM

December 1944 - my first birthday and being given a present of a large doll puppet (Pinochio) by my cousin who was carried to my pram by her uncle Tony.My sisters used the head of the doll to make a Guy Fawkes in 1947.
My parents claimed I could not possibly remember this so if thats the case? i also remember the street party in 1945 when I was one and a half, to celebrate the end of the war and eating sponge cakes shaped like sail boats with rice paper sails

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Fred Maslan
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 11:49 AM

Snippets of the Royal Ann cherry tree in the Backyard, and the cupboard where my dad kept Party Favors. First clear memory: sitting on my trike on the sidewalk outside my home watching the chimneys fall off the houses around me. Not scared until my grandmother came out onto the parch screaming. Earthquake in Seattle 1947 or 48 I would have been 1 or 2 years old.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 10:59 AM

At the age of 5, I went to Japan as a military dependant. The preparations involved 32 injections, all given in one morning. I can remember the room and the face of the nurse but not the faces of the 3 corpsmen who held me down. Before that, there's a screen memory (I think that's what they're called.) of looking through a chain link fence at some tulips.

At age 3, I mas given a ride on the back of a baby elephant. I know I was because I've seen the pictures - don't remember a thing about it, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 10:21 AM

My earliest memory is later than most folks - I have a very vague memory of the hall of the school I attended from kindergarten till we moved when I was around 7 years old.

My brother (2 years younger) has a memory of being in his baby bath & chewing the washer.

An older friend remembered being in his pram when his parents were playing tennis out of his sight & screaming, knowing he was abandoned. A very traumatic memory that coloured his whole life.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Bee
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 08:46 AM

Two and a bit. Standing on the couch watching out the window it backed on for my father to come home from work. We were living in Sydney (CB, not Aus.) then, and I saw an elephant walk up the street. No one believed me until next day. An elephant had walked away from a small circus.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 08:36 AM

I have pre language intra uterine memories. I wrote about them all here earlier at some length in my quantum thread.
I also have a few clear and treasured crib and baby carrage memories.

the 60's are another matter.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 07:01 AM

a) Breast feeding. Must have been months old, as I am told that I stopped feeding "au naturel" at about 1 year old. I remember where we were (a neighbour's lounge), how my mum was sat and who else was in the room.

b) Waking up from my afternoon nap alone, and crying in my cot, then my mum coming in from the wash house and picking me up. Her arms smelled faintly of "kanazine", a weak bleach product she used for whitening clothes. Don't know how old, but I wasn't walking yet.

Dianavan, I feel for that; I almost want to go back and give you "upees" or buy you a lollipop or something!

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Metchosin
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 03:41 AM

I remember being in a small boat, dropping my cookie overboard and crying while I watched it float away in the wake. We moved into town away from the water, when I was around 9 months old, so its a pretty early memory.

I also remember visiting an aunt up Island and sitting on my Dad's shoulders while a very large boar was being loaded up a ramp into a boxcar of a train. Apparently I must have been very impressed by the size of the pig's testicles, because I entertained the assembled crowd by yelling, "Look at the pig's bum, Daddy! Look at the pig's bum!" in my loudest voice. I would have been around 2 years old.   

When I was 3, I also have a very vivid memory of standing and picking bits of coloured broken glass from the stucco on my aunt's back porch and feeling very homesick. I had been sent to stay with her, while my mother was in hospital after delivering a stillborn baby.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: JennieG
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 01:22 AM

I can remember the time my brother and I pulled a large kitchen cupboard over onto ourselves - we had opened the two bottom doors and were swinging on them, one each, when the whole cupboard toppled over onto us. We were both crying, I couldn't get up because my skirt (a red woollen tartan skirt, I remember it) was caught under the cupboard door.

My mother, being a prudent woman, had put her breakables on the top shelves out of the way of three small children, so of course they fell further. I remember a jug shaped like a lettuce or cabbage leaf was one thing that broke.

My mother was outside hanging out washing, my youngest brother was in the pram outside with her. He was born a month before my fourth birthday. She said she heard the crash as the cupboard and its contents fell and when she saw the mess in the kitchen didn't know whether to whack us or cry.

Knowing my mother - she probably whacked us!

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 12:26 AM

Oh, wow, Sinsull. Mekes me feel for that litle kid.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: SINSULL
Date: 08 Jul 07 - 12:18 AM

I was in a crib screaming and fighting while my mother tried to put drops in my nose and my father yelled at her for failing so miserably while I simply wouldn't have any of it. I was terrified.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 09:31 PM

That was a foul blow, Charley!

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 09:30 PM

Kendall-

Do you also remember the CELLAR?

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: GUEST,dianavan
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 09:26 PM

Walking out to the car with my dad who had my newborn brother in his arms. I wanted 'upee' but he said, no, I was a big girl now. I was crushed. I was almost three.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Rapparee
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 09:02 PM

My second-oldest memory is wondering who that man was who was sharing my first Christmas alive. Big guy, arrived in a uniform and changed as fast as he could.

And the plastic Christmas tree....

I would have been about 10 months old.

Shortly after that I'm told that my mother dropped me on my head. I don't remember that, but I do have a scar. And lots of people say it explains a lot.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: kendall
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 08:35 PM

Iremember going to a party with my Father and coming home with my Mother.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Peace
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 07:50 PM

I was somewhere near two years old and trying to drag Queenie, a full-sized collie (by the tail) out of her dog house on a hot day. She nipped me and drew some blood. I understand she felt bad about it because it was her barking that alerted my family to the situation. They found her licking my face. She and I were friends for years afterwards, but I didn't try that again. Don't even have a scar to show for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 07:38 PM

I was somewhat younger than 2, all bundled up, and was wandering around the side yard to where the pig pen was. There were two enormous pink pigs within and I found them fascinating. My parents claimed I was too young to remember them but they're wrong!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 07:10 PM

I remember very vividly my father picking me up from what must have been some kind of preschool but it was way back before preschool days. He picked me up from whereever I was and sat me down on a huge rocking horse while he buttoned up my shoes (black patent leather ....) -- don't know where he was taking me but remember that day. Remember the house we had (would have been Germany at the time) - with our black Lab Drifty, having puppies and us going up and down the back stairs to see her.

And I remember when I was about five, a really vivid memory -- we lived in Egypt (my dad was in the British military and I was born there....) and there was a huge sandstorm coming through. My parents were both home and locked down the house but you could hear the wind howling outside ..... it was terrifying. Afterwards when my sister and I went out to play everything looked different. There was an old army truck that we kids used to play on and it was virtually buried in sand......

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 02:31 PM

My earliest memory is of my mother and I being in the hospital with food poisoning. My parents tell me it happened when I was three. I don't actually remember being sick, just being in the hospital.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 01:58 PM

Don firth, I imagine that you may not have been running quite as fast as your memory tells you. *grin* I remember one Sunday before my brother (1 year and 9 months younger than me) was born.

We lived in town and walked to church.

In my memory we are walking across the graveled lot to the church building. I am very pleased that I am allowed to walk and I swing along manfully (womanfully?) traveling as fast ss I can.

Then my father tells my sister (8 years older than I) to pick me up. I am crushed.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 01:27 PM

Going to a pic-nic with my Dad and coming back with my Mum.
In truth I remember when I was 2.5 yrs old being in Hospital with severe burns..I can remember much about it but nothing before it.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 01:24 PM

Not sure what age, but I must have been older than one or so because I was walking (running, in fact), but younger than two years, three months, because that's when I got polio, and that ended the running.

I had one of those toys they called "windmills" or "pinwheels"—a small plastic (celluloid, actually) four-bladed propeller attached to a stick with a pin (something like THIS, but not quite this fancy). A breath of wind and the propeller would spin. I remember running around the house (not in the house, but outside, around the house) at top speed, holding the thing in front of me and watching the propeller whirl.

The second memory, from around that same time, was from shortly thereafter.   We (my mother, father, big sister—two years older than me—and me) were on our way from Los Angeles, where my sister and I were born, to Seattle, where our parents were from. We went by ship (you could do that back then). I remember standing on a steamer-trunk and staring, fascinated, out a porthole at the vast expanse of water. The following morning when I woke up, I scrambled up on the steamer trunk, looked out the porthole, and saw, a few feet away, a forest of pilings covered with creosote and barnacles.

I yelled, "Get it out of the way, daddy, get it out of the way!!"

My dad laughed and said to my mother, "My God, he wants me to move the San Francisco harbor!"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 12:59 PM

Small enough to be kind of looking up into the eye of daddy's penis in the shower... no, it was not traumatizing, but I do remember it.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 12:22 PM

Mine: August 1937. Age: 8 months. Occasion(s): Traveling in my family's car from North Dakota to Oregon. There were 7 other kids and 2 parents in the car.

It was hot, the laps were bony and hard and I got SO tired. They lifted me back and forth across the front seat.

One night we slept outside the car and my sister (who was 7 years old at the time) woke up alone in the car and started screaming and crying at finding us gone.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were earlier memories- but this is my first documented one. It is my belief that we ALL remember early days. My next clear one was at 11 months.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 12:22 PM

*grin*...NOT the cannon shot, Rapaire?

I'm not sure....since we moved constantly until I was 6, I didn't have any 'place' to focus on. My earliest identifiable memories are about 3. Riding on a train with my mother when I was barely 3, to visit my grandparents in San Diego is the most prominent.(1942)

There are other 'snapshots' that must have been in my 2-3 year, but I have no idea where we were.

Subject: RE: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Rapparee
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 12:07 PM

Swimming upstream, seeing the ovum ahead....

Subject: BS: Your First Memory?
From: Mickey191
Date: 07 Jul 07 - 12:05 PM

Care to share your earliest memory? Do you know how old you were?

Mine: Standing & crying in a crib. I recall, vividly, the wind blowing the white curtains and double doors open wide and the sun streaming in. No one appeared to be home and it seemed forever till my Mother made an appearance and dried my tears. I was about 18 months.

It seems that I've heard that some people recall hearing events whilst still in the womb.