What is your earliest memory? (page 4)

Leolaia

Like someone mentioned in an earlier post, I remember how I thought pre-verbally.... <snip> I've never met anyone else who remembers those thought/feelings of infancy. I guess very few can remember that time in their lives. It's really very wonderful.

I remember thinking pre-verbally very well, as I was a late talker and didn't really use language until I was 4 or so. I thought visually and my interest in words was (and remains) visual in nature.

I am well-aware that memories so far in the mists of time can be corrupted, influenced by others, and otherwise distorted. I have many other "memories," or pseudo-memories, from that time which I am pretty sure are not genuine. Like a memory of being upset at a tiny puppy eating his way inside an Alpo can. That event happened when I was 1. But am I really remembering being disturbed at looking at a photo of this event, which happened many years later? I have a memory of when I was 1 of my mom coming home and showing me astronauts on the moon on television. I am also pretty sure this is not a real memory, because it is not first-person (I see myself in the memory), and because the house totally looked different in the memory than how it really was. The earthquake memory is different because it contains details (like the floor-boards) that are accurate of only the time when the event happened, as the house became carpeted just months later, and we then moved away the next year (just after I turned 2), and my memory is definitely first-person and also is something I remembered nightmarishly for years. But it also has been thoroughly corrupted and encrusted with embellishments. I have about over a hundred different memories from when I was 4-6, and I am very sure most of these are genuine -- though distorted through the passage of time. I was able to verify many things from my visit to Atlanta. For instance, I have a very vague memory of a fire occuring in a building on a particular street that had a grassy hill on the opposite side, and watching it while sitting on that hill. I talked to some oldtimers in the town and they confirmed that such a fire did occur there in 1975. Many of my early memories are dreams too. I recall about 6 or 7 dreams I had before I was 7 years old.

frankiespeakin

I guess I have alot of early memories, one was wearing braces on my legs because my legs were crooked from birth. I remember my mother puting them on me I'm not sure if I could walk at the time maybe I was a year or two old.

When 2 or 3 I remember getting pushed down the stairs by my father when we lived on the 2nd floor,, I remember the weird look on my his face as he held me and contemplated what he was about to do. And then him telling me on the way to the hospital lie for him when the doctors questioned me at the hospital. I think my mother said I got a concussion from the tumble.

I (3) remember walking the railroad tracks bridge over a stream with my mother and how afraid I was because the ties seemed so far apart, My mother would carry me but she was tired or I was bigger so she had me do it just holding her hand,, it was scary but fun too.

Elsewhere

I have a few, but I'm not sure which came first in time.
One was of me crawling under out house (it was on piers) and digging through the dirt and shells... I was hoping I would find some fossils.

At that same house I can also remember going in the back yard and using things to climb up to peek over the fence... I never could figure out what that strange place was. I always wanted to find a way to go explore it but never could find a way out of the yard. Years later I found out that our house was next to a huge graveyard.

I can also remember playing with a slinky. The house had an up-stairs with wook steps so my sister and I would put it at the top of the stares and watch it go down. I also remember my sister and me stretching the slinky through the house to see how far it would stretch. That poor slinky was never the same after that.

There is also a memory of my sister and me playing on the front porch looking at an inchworm. My mom kept rose bushes and had a garden of squash.

Another one was at a nursery that kept kids while their mothers went next door to exercise. I remember wondering what was in the other room that my mom went into... They never let me to look so I imagined all sorts of strange machines. I also remember crying and fussing about something and they mean lady put me in my own play pin or crib... not sure which ... I just remember laying down being mad and seeing the wood bars and the pad. I haaaated it in that nursery. I would always cry and fuss when my mom was dropping me off. I remember wondering why she would put me in there knowing how much I hated it

All of these memories are at the first house I can remember living at... the oldest I could have been was around three or four so I'm sure that the nursery memory was from when I was around two or younger.

recoveringjw

I was two, it was summer time. We went swimming in a neighbor's pool. My floaties fell off or I pulled them off and I sank slowly to the bottom of the pool, without making a sound. I remember watching Quinn, the neighbor boy swim down to me and race me back up to the surface. I don't remember panicking. I do remember all the attention I got and how upset my mom was. We lived outside of Jacksonville, Oregon in a placed "The Applegate". We lived on Humbug Road and most of our neighbors were JW's. Memories of when I lived up there are the best memories I have of my childhood. We were wild children; climbing in the grove of madrone trees with bare feet; sleeping out in the open; riding on the backs of our father's dirt bikes, screaming for them to go over more bumps and to go faster.

Cripes, now I am all nostalgic.

Bethany

ballistic

well now, I may suprise with my answer. I remember having my nappy changes and the pain I used to feel in my neck (my mother used to change me on her lap with my neck hanging off). I remember this very vividly.

As a baby, I didn't realise that fighting to lift my head was what was causing excrutiating pain. My screams just meant to mother that "I didn't like my nappy change" but the screams were absolute agony and I still have neck problems to this day.

On a different note, I also remember being weighed in stainless steel scales as a baby, but I strongly doubt this was the weighing on birth. But this again, was obviously a very early memory.

Undaunted Danny

My earliest childhood impressions:getting a beating at the meeting

ballistic

P.S. I did not like being weighed either, it was scary and I was frightened and cold and a feeling I can only describe as being seperated from mother which is the worst feeling for a baby.

StinkyPantz

((Dawn))

LT-

Age 2 and 8 months - going to the hospital where my first brother was born. Being given a 2' long toy boat that my dad made for me to keep my occupied (I still have it).

The fact that you still have that is SO cute!!

Nicolas

Ironically, I remember from my earliest memory that I was in a catholic church. Juste before my parents converted to the JW.

Nosferatu

Recoveringjw, that reminds me of another early childhood memory.

I was at the park playing. I have no clue where or what my mother was doing. One of the kids I was playing with took me by the hand and took me to his place (across the street from the park). I remember crying because I was taken away from my mother, but he said he was only going to be inside for a couple of minutes. I remember looking at a toy made out of Lego sitting on the back porch. After he came back out of the house, he took me back to the park and said, "see, there's your mom". Mom yelled at me for that one too. I must have been five years old at the time.

It's funny when my mom brings this up to me now. She'll tell me her side of the story, and then I'll tell her my memory of it. Then she'll tell me that my memory is a load of shit, and I only remember her telling me the story. I hate it when my mother tries to make me feel like a stupid dumbass for my memories.

What is your earliest memory?

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