What's your earliest memory?

grabbing a bottle of white-out and my dad pulling it out of my hands

I remember standing in a crib and looking at some curtains. I also recall peeing on my dad’s face as he changed my diaper.

That sounds fun, How old do you think people start remembering things?

I have a strange memory of being in Melbourne, Australia, in a hotel room (my dad had a business trip there back in 1993) and I remember being afraid of a blinking red light (it was a telephone) and calling for my mom. I also remember marshmallows in a bowl on a table in that hotel somewhere.

Looking back on it, I’m not sure if I truly remember it or if it’s just a false memory brought on by my parents talking about it. It definitely happened, but I’m not sure if the picture in my mind of it is really accurate or if I just formed that picture based on what my parents told me. Unfortunately, it’s too far back to know for sure.

I also have a memory of being in a basket while I was quite young. Have no idea when or where that memory is from, though.

Standing on my mother’s feet in the water and her accidentally letting go of me, me almost drowning, her hands catching me back up.

I remember falling out of my crib and landing on a throw rug that catipulted me across the room and underneath my mothers bed.
My mother came in and exclaimed ” How did you do that! ’ lolol

I was maaaaybe…18 mos. old.

I have a very strong memory sense.

I remember walking across the sunny street absorbed in keeping the elastic of my blouse sleeve from touching my vaccination wound. It hurt. They tell me it swelled and pussed. I don’t remember that though. Red and yellow trimming on that blouse. I was 2.

Sitting in a garden on a sunny day.

It doesn’t make any sense now, but this is the way I remember it.

I don’t remember how old I was, but I couldn’t talk yet. I was speaking to my mother, and she could not understand me. I explained and explained to her what I wanted, and finally I threw a tantrum. She put me in a crib, and let me cry it out. I ended up falling asleep, and woke up remembering that I was angry when she put me in there, and I decided I needed to still be angry, but I couldn’t remember why. So that made me angry, until I got tired of trying to be angry for no reason, so I called my mother to come get me.

My family moved when I was three, so I know any memories from that house are from my three-year-old self.

Playing with my brothers’ model airplanes on their bunk beds while my mother ironed clothes. The neighbors’ cat named Smokey. The plastic pool in the back yard with a picnic bench “diving board”.

Having a moment with my diaper.

I remember wanting to be carried into the house from the car. My mother was carrying my baby brother who was just 12 months younger than me. I know I wasn’t two yet.
I sat in the front yard, it was getting dark and the mosquitoes were biting me. I sat there til mom came out and picked me up and carried me in. She rocked me before I went to bed that night.
I guess with a sister just a year older than me, and a brother just a year younger, I was needing a little bit of attention

My older sister’s playmate coming over and drinking out of MY sippy cup. I was pissed.

Or my kindergarten teacher discouraging me from wanting to be a dolphin trainer (she was a heinous woman who should have never worked with children).

I was in bed and a cuddly stuffed animal on the shelf started moving around and talking to me. Obviously never REALLY happened but I recall it with such intensity that it has become real to me. Memories are funny like that. I’ll share memories with my parents and the way I remember it is often SO different from how it really happened.

I remember one summer afternoon in particular, in Davis, California. It was really warm outside, and I was playing in the gutter, racing little sticks and leaves down the flow of water from the neighbors hose. Suddenly, I heard a big stomp, and turned to see my dad standing there.
“I just jumped over the house!” he said.
“Do it again!!” I said.
“I’m too tired!”
And then he walked off.

@hudsong Your dad sounds awesome.

I have a set of clear episodic memories from around 2–4 years old—nobody remembers earlier than about 2 & we moved when I was 4. But I can’t sort them out chronologically to say which is the earliest. I remember seeing lots of legs of furniture wherever I played, ceiling lights being very high above, & all grown-ups being gigantic.

Abandoned in dark cradle with toys. Having so much beautiful dream.

I remember holding onto my mother’s bed and trying to see her in it. My father told me I was a baby and it was impossible to make me understand my mother was an invalid and could not hold me. Dad said I was placed on the bed to sit for short periods,but I always wanted up whern I was down.I was probably between one and two yrs old.

My earliest memory was most likely the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. I just recall hiding under my dad’s desk in what amounted to a study. I was a hair over two and a half years old, my sister was just 15 days old.
Other than that, it’s a tossup between drinking some pink, syrupy medicine, or the night that my dad brought home our first VCR. I figure that I was around 3.

Riding the open train on Cape Cod. Seeing the dunes towering above me. I had just turned 4 I think.

Mom left my dad when by the time I was 1 and she married my step dad by the time I was 2, so this memory had to be during the year between while we were living with my grandparents. I was lying in a crib under the window in their guest room, staring up through Holly Hobby curtains. Nothing exciting.

I have many memories from when Mom was married to my first step dad, just before I turned 2 until I was 4. I met him again when I was 24 and he could not believe how many accurate memories I had from that age.

I remember being between 18 mo.s and 2 years old, and waking up in my crib, and looking at the curtains above me. They had drawings of a cow jumping over the moon. I stood up, and heard my Mom say to my sisters: “Don’t make noise, I don’t want your brother to wake up.”
When I was taken from my crib, I told my mom I was already awake, and she told me that she didn’t say what I heard.
It’s funny. My first memory is of my Mom lying to me.

I don’t really remember anything.

Of course being born made at the start of creation to be the eternal anti-christ can have that effect of you

I remember my brother taking me out on a bike ride with his mates, then, when they got bored having a little kid around, leaving me & cycling off. I didn’t have any idea where I was so just sat there crying until a neigbour drove past & took me home.

My dad being violent to my mum.

A nightmare about a cackling witch sitting on the shower head in my parents’ bathroom. She was such a bitch.

I remember my grandmother taking me to some baby-day care. They had a garden and we had to take nap-times on little matrasses. I remember this girl who had long black/dark brown hair and I was staring at her, thinking, how the hell did her hair grow so long bc I understood that I wasnt living for a long period of time (like 3 years) and my hair was so short and boyish but real thin and soft and they WOULD NOT grow faster, and there she was with hair up to her ass, it confused me so much! FIRST time I felt this weird emotion I wasnt very fond of, jealousy!
Also I remeber getting a shot with my grandmother (also younger then 3 yrs) and throwing a tantrum at the doctors, running away from nurses crying screaming bc I was so afraid of needles! I still am!

@Dibley Not really the way things are meant to be is it.

@Cloverfield No. I grew up thinking that was how men were meant to behave.

@Dibley Not how we’re meant to, but unfortunately, how many of us do!

I am not sure how old I was but I definitely younger than four. I climbed out of bed and was wondering around in my room. Somehow I got hold of a lamp cord and it shorted out. I remember a bang on my hand, bright lights and sparks, then my dad running into the room and picking me up, checking me out and putting me back in bed.

I have since chosen a career in electronics and have repeated the bang and spark bits. Unfortuantely my dad was not there to save me.