Mine goes back to May of 1955.
I was 17 months old.
My mother went into labor with the last of her 13 children, and I remember pitching a fit because the midwife wouldn't let me into her room.
How about you?
Sylvia
How Far Back Does Your Memory Go?
by snowbird 89 Replies latest jw experiences
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cameo-d
I remember a couple of things when I was in the womb.
Voices sounded like when you are underwater.
I am not kidding.
And I have not done a "past life" regression either.
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Lady Lee
A couple of things when I was 4 - being really sick and having a doctor come to examine me (yes they made house calls back then) and my brother getting his arm caught in the wringer washer. I wasn't actually there at the time so I know what I supposedly saw is a fabricated memory but the part I think is not fabricated is coming home from preschool and a lot of people being in the house waiting for my mother to get back from the hospital with him
My house was not a safe place to be so I expect a lot was repressed
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keyser soze
I have vague recollections from a couple days ago.
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snowbird
Cameo-D, are you sure?
Lady, I repressed a lot of memories, also.
For instance, we were so poor that our mother would "loan" some of us to others who were better off.
I must have been 6 or 7 when one of my favorite sisters was sent away to another family.
For the life of me, I can't remember her leaving!
It must have been so traumatic that I blanked it out.
Keyser, you are a hoot!
Sylvia
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yknot
18 months......Oct 1975 (go figure!)
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snowbird
YKnot, you actually remember the hoopla of 1975 at age 18 months???
Incredible!
Sylvia
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hubert
What time is it?
Hubert
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Leolaia
False memories are very common of early childhood, especially if the memory is of an event dating to an age less than 1 (when infantile amnesia greatly shortens the life of memories at that age). One may as a child try to imagine one's birth or may have dreamt about it and then later forgotten the context of these images that are then remembered. But even then, some false memories may have fragments of genuine memories. Here is one example from my childhod.
I remember the San Fernando Valley earthquake of 1971. That happened when I was seven months old. But here is the thing -- I don't remember the actual event but a series of recurring nightmares I had up till I was 7. I remember the last dream best of all, even though it is almost entirely fictional. But because I remember a dream that preceded it, I have a sense of what this latter dream added to the memory (a completely false view outside the window; I had forgotten by then what the view was in my old home). And I have a good idea of what is fictional in the earliest version of the dream I can remember (that my crib rolled across the room to the window and I grabbed onto the curtains to hold on; in reality, I would not have been able to reach the curtains and my mom took the wheels off my crib the night before). But is it 100% fictional? I think there may be some genuine bits from the actual event that the dreams drew on. During the actual event, I was indeed in my crib. The dream starts with me looking out through the crib bars at the floor boards rattling. As it turns out, the floor of my room was indeed wooden with lengthwise boards. And here is another thing -- after my 1st birthday, the floor was replaced with carpet and then we moved away before I turned 2. So I did accurately remember the apperance of the floor at the time. And because the event was so traumatic, it is not hard to think that it inspired nightmares for several years, with each dream reinforcing the memory while at the same time corrupting it. So I am not sure if I can count this as my "earliest memory"; I tend to think more if it as a memory of a dream I had when I was 7. (As it turns out, I remember many dreams I had when I was 4-6). But it perhaps has a fragment of a memory from when I was 7 months.
Other than this, I have two definite memories from when I was 3 that are certainly genuine (setting the table for dinner with a chipped plate in the summertime, and then Christmas in a new house; we moved so much in my childhood that it makes it easier to come up with precise dates for many of my early memories). I can't say I remember anything between the age of 7 months and 3. There are a few things, but these are also found in the photo album, so am I really remembering looking at the photo? There was a puppy that ate his way inside a can of Alpo and got stuck. I remember feeling so horrified at this. But since there is a photo of this, I am not sure if it was the actual event I recall or feeling horrified when looking at the photo as a young child. I also have a memory of my mom showing me TV coverage of astronauts on the moon from 1971. But the layout of the house was all wrong in the memory; so I think this is perhaps a memory of a dream a few years later when I had already forgotten the appearance of my first home.
(BTW I visited that home again in 1999 and met the current occupants who showed me around the property. It turns out that it was heavily damaged in the Northridge quake in the 1990s, so I guess it was a good thing my dad lost the mortgage)
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Priest73
sorry. what was the question?