What is your earliest Memory?

[LoisPrice]

I'll go first

my earliest memory is being in a cot with my cousin in the room, they moved out when I was around 12 months old. I can briefly remember the cot end with all the animal characters. My next memory at 23 months was the moon landing, my parents got me out of bed to watch, saying it was history in the making and they wanted me to see it - I can remember (whether it happened is anther matter entirely)

whats yours?

Being in hospital, just before having an eye op. I remember the colour of the pale turquoise walls and the Winnie the Pooh characters painted on the walls. I remember sitting very close to the tv there as I had a patch on, teenage mutant ninja turtles was on. I can have only been 18 months at the most because that was when I had the second eye operated on. It’s a very vague sort of memory with specific bits, if that makes sense.

I was in the box room which was basically a converted boiler cupboard until we moved house.

Having a teddy on my bed. I remember looking across the landing and my mum was throwing up in the bathroom and wondering why she was going to the toilet out of her mouth. Also just walking into the middle of my brothers room and standing in the middle. It felt like a big room. Accidentally banging my brothers head on the wall which had bumpy wall paper. Sitting in the hallway with a bucket of toys. I think it was an ideal place as near the kitchen but could see out the window.

I also have an idea that my mum used to take me downstairs to sit on the sofa to feed me but I don't know why I know that.

when I started to read your post - I thought you were going to say being born!

I can remember my mum lifting me out of my cot, sitting in a push chair looking at my feet and sitting in one those walker things with a tray and wheels.

I think it’s hard to tell whether really early memories are real. A memory at 12 months is probably not real, research suggests that memories before 2yrs are likely influenced by stories or later memories.

Thats interesting

I hadn't got parents to ask, so I asked my cousin about the fact I could remember her brother in the room and me in a cot. I also gave her the description of the cot. I hadn't known that her brother and I shared a room, she at this point 40 years later told me that part. Perhaps its not real

Losing my toy water pistol in a park when I was in my pushchair.

I can still point out the spot where it happened, remember what it looked like, and that my DF found it underneath my pushchair.

According to my DM I must have been 3 at the time.

I was sitting in the sea aged 2.5
Sea was warm and I clearly remember the swimsuit I was wearing.
memory is mostly the sensation of the warm sea, the hot sun and the bright light of the sun on the sand.
I can only date it because we went to Sapin when I was 2.5 and so it is a very specific date. Other holidays were on Isle of Wight and sea was cold!

Being inside the cupboard under the stairs with my sibling, listening to the normal family sounds of my mother and younger sibling chatting and interacting as usual. I can't remember what our 'crime' was but being in that cupboard was a regular occurrence for the two of us. I was around 5 years old at the time.

My earliest is looking at the baby bouncer hanging in the kitchen doorway. I don't remember being in it though.

But there's something that I've posted before: Mum put me in a playpen which was on a rug in front of the fire in the front room. She gave me a hand mirror to play with while she went into the kitchen. When she came back, the mirror was missing and she never found it. She told me this when I was older.
Anyway, I've thought about this over the years. And then, recently - over 60 years later! - a memory came back to me: I was reaching between the bars, poking something into a gap in floorboards. I felt satisfied when it disappeared.
Thinking about it now, the rug was on floorboards. Maybe there was a gap between the fireplace and the floorboards. But I've solved the mystery! So you could say, that's my earliest memory.

A jolly, friendly, chubby woman who lived near us, looking into my pram when I was in it. Slightly upright - around 10-11 months old I was. Don't remember what she said, as I was too young to know words IYSWIM. I remember her looking down on me, and her beaming smile, and big jet black bouffant.

Also, my uncle who lived in Canada at the time, (had been there 3 years,) visiting us, and lifting me up off the couch and swinging me into the air. Must have been maybe 15-16 months old. He didn't come back again until he moved back to the UK - 2 years later.

I don't remember much else from under 2 years old, but I do remember these 2 incidents.

'Research' can suggest memories under 2 are not real, (as a pp said,) but my parents neighbour (who lived 2 doors away until she died when I was about 12,) and also my uncle, both recall these incidents. And I was the one who brought them up to them when I was about 7 or 8, so they didn't mention them and plant them in my mind.

Finding out my mum was expecting my younger brother, I would have been about 21 months.

My nan taking me to see new baby cousin in the local hospital. She's about 2 1/2 years younger than me. It's a very dark image in my mind but I knew it was the small cottage hospital and aunty on the bed.

Aged 2 being at a Tupperware party (very 80's!!), I remember playing with Tupperware behind the sofa with another child. My mum was shocked I remembered this. Then quite soon after, I remember my dad looking after me for the day whilst my mum was in hospital. I remember going to work with him and rolling down a hill then being served dinner of burnt fish fingers and Co-op lemonade!

Standing in a cot in my mothers bedroom & my mother breastfeeding my newborn sister, I was just two years old.

My sister being born when I was 3, vivid memory of the hospital layout (reckon I could still find the room!) but less so of actually meeting the baby.

Weeing on some stone stairs outdoors in a plaza on holiday and feeling embarrassed, sister was in a pram so I was probably nearly 4.

Im good, but I’m not quite that good 😉 😂

I was about 2, I was at the Zoo in Belfast and standing at the bottom of a massive flight of stone steps. I can remember looking up at the steps and my Granny beside me.

We moved when I was 2, and before we did DM took me to the new house. There was a little alcove as you went into the living room, and the previous owner (still living there) had a collection of pretty shells on a shelf. She and DM were talking and I remember being transfixed by them. They were really big ones, probably conch shells.

I asked DM about it a few years ago and she said there were shells there and I was very interested in them.

We moved when I was two so I can be sure any memories I have of the old house are when I was younger than that. I have a few memories of picking petals off the flowers in the front garden there, which I was not supposed to do, and there being a girl in the neighbours back garden who used to call to me over the fence and I didn't like it. I also remember walking (toddling?) with red shoes on and the tar on the roads being melted, it was sticky and it scared me, which may have been the hot summer of 1976 when I would have been only one -but it may not have been!

I have strong memories of nursery school when I was four and from then onwards.

How weird, started post same way as CoodleMoodle's post before me!

Getting a thorn from the big rose bush in our back garden stuck right in the middle of my forehead! I must have been about 2. I remember crying while my Dad tweezered it out.

5 years old.
Hazy memories age 5 to 20.

(Traumatic childhood.)

Standing on a balcony with a stone wall which had curved cut outs. I was watching my Father get out the car diwn below and he looked up and waved. I was with my older brother and my Mother. This was in Aden (now Yemen).We left Aden when i was 16 months.

And I'm going to start mine the same way haha.
We too moved out when I was between 2 and 3 but I clearly remember the place - My older sister, bless her, she was sleeping in a windowless room / cupboard and I remember that.

Anyway my first memory was me, standing up in my cot, saying "I peed in my bed". The funny thing is that in my memory, it's my current voice, and I say that in a very matter of fact way.

I also remember my first day at nursery when I was just 3. I had a pink jacket and I was NOT crying because one of the child minder was wearing pink too and pink made me happy (still does)