What's Your Earliest Memory?
I've kicked back here relaxing and watching Wimbledon on TV. Contemplating life and where I want to go with my new website design, I began pondering the past and what we remember of it. I thought it might be interesting to record our earliest memories. So.... I want you all to comment on what your very first memory in life is and approximately how old you were at the time. Put your earliest memory down in the comments section here and we can compare and contrast them.
Here is mine: I remember it was dark. I was bundled up in a blanket and being bounced around. There was water on my face. A door opened and then a huge noise and lightning flash. Dad ran past and the door closed again and all was dark.
Later when I told this story to mom we figured out what the memory was all about. We lived in northern Tennessee where there were a lot of tornadoes. We had a storm shelter in the back yard. One time when I was 11 months old we had a tornado warning at night. Mom bundled me up and carried me out to the shelter. When mom and dad got there they realized that they had left my bottle back in the house. Dad had to run back to the house to get the bottle. When he opened the door to the shelter a lightning bolt crashed nearby and really scared them.
I think that most of our earliest memories are imprinted in the longterm section due to them evoking a strong emotion such as joy or fear. That explains why I still remember that night. Please let me know what YOUR first memory was! Let's compare.
Technorati Tags: Memory, Past
13 Comments:
My first memory is of my father beating my mother, I remember screaming and him pulling telephones out of the wall and my mother crying and trying to call the police. I guess I was about 3.
Nice one huh?
2nd memory, having the end of my finger cut off. Ouch!! I even remember wrapping my hand in a yellow tea towel.
I'm not sure what my first memory is. My family has a habit of telling lots of stories, and we have photos and slides, so I'm never quite sure if what I have are my own memories or are "inspired" memories, so to speak. However, many of the things I do remember revolve around my best friend at the time, Julie. Just over a year older than me, she was so the center of my universe. I also remember our dog, Geronimo, and playing with him. I believe in all these memories I'm already able to walk and talk, so they aren't too terribly early. It's worth noting, though, that I do have some gaps in my memory because of abuse. So I don't know how I'd fit into this little study, since the events were certainly traumatic and major, but I've gone and blocked a lot of them out.
I remember being outside, on a porch. A door opened - I can remember a huge gap under the door before it opened. When it was open, I saw a pile of red, and was very happy and excited at the redness of it and went and rolled in the red. Turns out I was about 16 months old. My parents had rented a motel room, and when the door was opened found that red dust had blown under the door and into the room. I rushed across the room and rolled in the red dust. My next memory is of watching a small, smooth-haired brown dog digging under a wooden fence. I was fascinated by the dog, its busy tail wagging. This dates from when I was 2.5-3 years old. All my early memories are associated with intense emotions, in these two cases pleasure and curiosity.
I was about 3 or 4, sitting on the edge of my grandparents couch. Grandpa was very lightly rubbing my back .. I used to call it tickling because it was so light. He was smoking his pipe reading a magazine.
Next is about 4 1/2 and I was with my great grandmother. She had all kinds of clocks in one room in her house. and she would go in the room with me and we would move the hands to get hem all chiming at one time.
Next was five, and I had a fasination with fire. My dad was drunk and caught me playing with the gas stove, lighting toothpicks on fire. He turned the burner on high and held my hand over the flame until I got blisters. I never played with fire again ...
1st memory - Age ? crawling, not walking yet. Sitting in front of a small black pot-belly stove watching smoke roll out. Mom making a strange Akkkk sound. Me being whisked away by Gradma.
I told Mom that many years ago .. we were talking about memories. She said I couldn't possibly remember that as I was "just a baby". I described the stove in detail and she agreed it was correct. The chimney was blocked with soot and the smoke had backed up into the house.
Me getting my tummy pumped after drinking blueing. About 18 months old.
Standing in front of the screen door watching a thunder storm and eating pennies. Honest !!.. My Mom agreed I did do that .. she watched my poops for several days waiting for those pennies to show up. I was between 2 and 3 years old.
There is no feeling of fear attatched to any of these memories. I think maybe I remember them because they were traumtic for my Mom, but I don't feel that they were for me.
my earliest memory is of my older brother (by 22 months) dragging me down the stairs by my foot, with my head bonking down after him...I was about a year or so old I'm told, because I remembered what the stairs looked like and that my mother had fallen down them, landing on crutches. She is still just as clumsy...anyhow, apparently I was very young when we lived in that house and that happened.
I have always been bipolar. It wasn't diagnosed until I was in my 20's because people didn't talk about such things in those days. I remember several incidents of doing very impulsive, sometimes destructive things, like using a pencil to punch lots of holes in the arms of a big vinyl chair. Not only do I remember my parents' being upset, but also my complete inability to explain why I did what I did. I remember lots of feelings I didn't understand that made me feel like I was different than those around me. The brain is a wonderful thing, when it works correctly. As soon as I started taking the right medications to balance the chemicals, I was able to do more of the things I wanted to do. I was less "sidetracked" by feelings.
My earliest memory is from when I was about 18 months old, and a typhoon (that's what we call them out here, although we never get them) swept through Portland October 12, 1962. Since we live inland 200 miles and over a mountain range, a rogue typhoon is extremely rare. I remember the family being bundled up and sent to my grandparent's house where they had a garage that was made of solid brick. I remember the howling of the wind and how cold it was. I had never been cold before, that much I am certain of. I also have extraordinary hearing, much more sensitive than most people's hearing so the noise made me scream. I could hear it before anyone else did, and I have omnidirectional ears that point where they want (yes, hearing like a dog's - and *don't comment on that*, Ken!) ;) I very clearly remember touching the walls, this is the clearest memory from that day. I can still see the texture and color and smell them. The smell of the first rain on the sidewalk conjures up that same smell and without fail, yea these 40 or so years later, brings back that smell and texture and color of the bricks. So my earliest memories are centered around something very abnormal that sent up a palpable sense of fear and urgency in my parents, sensory things (cold, color, texture, smell) and discovering I had abnormally gifted hearing.
My next memory is of my mother crying and screaming the day Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. I was two and a half. That is where the memories begin to "look" like current memories - I know what she said, I remember what the neighbor lady wore when she came over to comfort my mother. The neighbor was a recent German immigrant so she didn't react at all the same which was my first "study in contrasts". I remember the neighbor instructing mom to call my dad at work but mom insisting she could not do that or he would be very angry for disturbing him. Then the words "Suzanne! I am sure he already knows. Tell him to get home and take care of his family" from the German lady. The look on my mother's face was like she'd been slapped. And I don't remember anyone calling my mother by her full first name, that struck me as very strange. I remember the TV being on. (We were not allowed to watch TV, so this was novel). I very clearly remember thinking the "dead man" looked alive in the box, and that he was blue which struck me as odd. I tried to touch the face of the blue man in the box, but got yelled at. I had no idea that I was watching pre-recorded images, and that TV at the time was only black and white, ergo the "dead man" moving around in the box and being "blue". So it was also my first memory of TV. To this day, I hate television and refuse to watch it. I always have wondered if it was because of this first memory of it.
All of these were "firsts" for me. Being cold. Hearing my mother cry. Hearing someone mention the word "assassinated" and knowing what it meant (waaaaay too young for that one...). Seeing my mother's fear. The walls of the garage. And the noise of the wind, that was the first time I knew - as did my parents then - that I had abnormally sensitive hearing. I think that is why the noise is remembered - every single strange note of it - because it was the first time I had had an "abnormal" experience, and somehow knew it wasn't like what everyone else was experiencing. I didn't intellectually know that at the time, of course, but that was when I knew there was something different. Both of these early incidents had extremely strong emotional and psychological vibes emanating from them. They were traumas that I lived in a small way by myself but mostly through the emotions my parents were sending out. The typhoon was the first time my "world" was disturbed that I can remember. The assassination was the first time that EVERYONE was sending out vibes of fear and anger and sadness. There was a definite psychic trauma in the air.
I realize your students won't understand that last part, having been raised in an extraordinarily violent, graphic, angry world where from infancy they were put in front of tvs and video games that daily maim and murder people for entertainment value. However, I was a child of the 60's and that was the day the innocence of the country died. Hokey sounding, yes, but very real, especially to a little kid.
My parents divorced when I was three. I remember being on an air plane and throwing up (Mom thinks this is when my dad came to get me from her after she had left with me). I also clearly remember my dad telling me if I beat him to the phone I could talk to my mom, & he didn't let me. I think if he had let me talk to her I wouldn't remember this. The third memory of that was being in a large room with a big desk a man in black (robe?) and I kneeling playing with a wind up hopping rabbit. Perhaps the judge talking to me privately in the custody hearing. I have vague memories of Hollis house too, but most likely during the time of the divorce as well. I believe we remember only things that impress us one way or the other thru our entire lives.
When I was 2.5 years old, I remember my brother using an electric carving knife to cut an orange. We were singing a song, cutting our oranges (I had a smaller knife) and my brother's hand slipped. He cut his thumb off. He then ran into the bedroom of my parents and woke up my mom, who screamed and woke up my dad. My dad wrapped his thumb in a flowered comforter and brought him to the hospital.
Around the same time, my other brother was in the hospital for surgery. We went to visit him. My parents bought him a colouring book and crayons. I remember crying because I wanted new crayons too. I also remember that he was sleeping in a crib bed, and I called him a baby. I remember that the hospital had better toys then at home...
I believe this is one of my earliest and it never made much sense until my mother clarified it years later. I remember very very white sand that was soft and crystal blue water as far as you could see. When I was taken to Ocean City, MD as a kid, I could never understand why the sand wasn't white nor the water blue, like in my memory. Any other place we went along the Atlantic ocean was never like I was "remembered" the ocean to be like.
I finally (as a late teenager) asked Mom. I knew from family history that she had taken me to Hawaii as a toddler to meet up with my father while he was on R&R from Vietnam. Back in those days, when soldiers had leave, they only had specific places they could go, so my mom flew by herself with me (i was about 18 months old) from Ft. Belvoir, VA or Carlisle, PA to LA and then on to Hawaii to spend a week with him.
That's where they have white, white sand and crystal blue water.
i also think that smell is a big trigger for early memories. Certain smells will take me to events in my early life - some pleasant and some that are best left in the past.
I've been anxious to go back to Hawaii to see if it does indeed have white sand and blue water.
i remember learning to walk. my dad was on one end of the kitchen and my mom the other. i was tottering back and forth while they caught me if i stumbled. i think it's a pretty good memory...especially after reading some other people's.
Having a nightmare in my crib that my hands had turned blue....also of being very ashamed of having to have a diaper changed and that I wasn't toilet trained yet..and feeling really sick to my stomach.I remember it being around New Year's..
Moments in history: Exhuming Lee Harvey Oswald, Elvis' funeral
Born in March 1974
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