What's your earliest memory?

[katewhinesalot]

After reading a memoir where the author describes an incident that happened when she was three years old in great detail, I'm wondering whether this is usual. I have a few memories of that age but they are hazy and certainly no memory of conversations.

I remember being held on the lap of a playgroup worker as she was reading a story to a group of children sitting on the floor. I was crying my eyes out as I wanted my mum.
I also remember the home corner at said playgroup.
But these are just snapshots, as are memories of the first year or two at school. Not much detail at all until I was 7ish.

Do you remember bad incidents more do you think?

I can remember in about 1960 when I was 2/3 and my sister was a little baby on a pram. I sat on a pram seat with my mum pushing us up a hill to town, I can remember wanting to get off, then back on again etc and how annoyed my mother got with me!
I can remember standing at the garden gate waiting for my dad to come home for dinner every day on his bike, just after the works hooter had sounded at midday.
I can remember my dad going to “ night school” on a Thursday and us having ice cream for tea that day as it was a special treat! I had to go outside to the road with a bowl to get it from the ice cream van.
I can remember watching my dad lay a new concrete path in the garden when I was about three and having to keep off it while it dried, can vividly remember watching some ants pushing their way through the wet cement! Would love to go back to that house to see if the path is still there 60 years later.
I can remember sitting on the back doorstep shelling peas from dads veg plot for dinner.
I have absolutely no memories of my mother having any time to play with me or what toys I had. Although my dad had quite a good job I think we were quite poor looking back.

I have a weird one. Lying on my back in a pram, half dozing, and listening to my mum chatting to my gran. Hearing a sudden, blaring noise, which woke me up properly, and seeing a dark shape move across the hood of my pram as someone said "oh, there's the phone"

The interesting thing about the memory is the sudden, wordless realisation that the noise is the phone, the noise has a name and a reason, and it isn't just a random noise. Obviously my baby self didn't put it in those words, it was more like a split second of realisation and awareness.

It makes me wonder what age I actually was!

Not aware of any real memories before was about 4 and my teddy lost an eye at nursery. I remember as it was traumatic for me at the time.
My mate was one of those who could remember (brag) all sorts of bullshit about being in her cot etc, one of those who could remember going to a picnic with her dad and coming home with her mum.

I remember climbing out of a cot regularly. I remember hating the clothes my mum would make me wear
And people laughing at me for the way I pronounced certain things
I remember hiding things like keys and no one being able to find them but not remembering where I had hid them either

I can remember running through the long grass that was by the block of flats, that we lived in. I was around 18 months.

I remember chasing our big ginger cat around the flat at about 2 1/5. I was shut in a bedroom with him. I didn't realise but we were moving into our new house. I was quite happy being in the bedroom, my dolls pram and other toys were in there.

I was sitting at a table eating baked beans with a spoon, and my cousin who lived next door but one, came running in and said excitedly "Clawdy, it's Christmas Eve! " Think I was about three, or maybe younger as I certainly wasn't aware it was Christmas!

My mum can also recall things from age 2/3. She recalls pushing her dolly pram around the garden, then walking back to her mother saying 'ssss, ssss' but not having the word to describe what was in the pram. Finally my nan went to have a look, and it was a snake inside (rural area in Australia!).

There are some really young memories on here.

Someone mentioning the seat on the pram has triggered a memory for me, but I don't remember if it was me on that seat with my baby sister in the pram or whether it was a random different pram with a seat on it.
Frustrating.

Both my parents have strong memories of things that happened during the war, they were near an area of a lot of action. Things like being carried during the night and watching a building burning down, seeing planes go over, and recognising the sound that meant run and hide under the stairs. One would have been 2-3, the other about 18 months - 2 at the time.

Age 3 going to visit my grandad in hospital in London after he just had a heart bypass. I remember the room and the view from the window. I remember my Mum telling me that I had to be on my best behaviour and very calm and quiet. I remember my sister whispering something in my ear, and then telling me that my Grandad recovered from the operation well because he so wanted to know what she whispered in my ear 😄

Sitting on my neighbours garden table aged about 16 months or so . I could vividly describe their house in detail including wallpaper, their daughter etc . When we went back to that house for the first time since 1993 (so when I was about 18 months we left , went back when I was about 21) I could find their house without being told , etc .

Apart from that I remember lots of details about my Grannie’s, my mums friends house, other neighbours from first home etc .

From about 18-24 months most things are very clear eg birthdays, houses, playgroup, mothers and toddlers etc etc .

I’m thought to have Asperger’s syndrome though and been suggested that might be why I can remember things so well .

I had a really interesting lecture on memories once, it said that most young memories are those that we've seen in a picture and our brains made the memory to set the scene of the picture. I realised this was true for myself!

That’s interesting

My son who is 2.5 says he can remember being in my tummy and he goes to the music and pulls out a particular album and says he heard it.
It’s the album of the gig we saw just before he was born.

I’m
Not too sure he can actually remember and that he might actually have heard conversations and put 2 and 2 together and made himself a memory

I remember lying on the floor looking at a basket of kittens (although I don't remember it being kittens, I have since been told that's what they were) under a dresser, and being called Mo Chuisle by adults. It was on a holiday to Ireland when I was two.
I remember my brother lying in his carry cot beside my parents bed when I was 2.5. So sporadic memories, but dateable ones.