What Is Your Earliest Childhood Memory?

I've been thinking a lot about my existence and mortality as a whole. In part, what brought upon this thinking is a mixture of my existential crisis (ongoing) and my imagination/curiosty.

I have a vivid memory from when I was 9 months old. I was in a plane with my parents. We were going to Jamaica and my ears kept popping and it was bothering me so I started to cry. I remember how it felt - my ears popping and the frustration. I remember my parents conversation. I don't know if I knew what words were but my dad or mom asked for candy for me to help with my ears. I believe it was my mom who said, "Maybe it's her ears." It still blows my mind how I was able to remember what she said at 9 months old, yet, I couldn't talk.

I remember the flight attendant bending down and looking at me. I remember being carried as a 9 month old and how hot it was when we got off the plane. I remember the warm air on my face as we exited the plane and went down the stairs.

A few years ago, I brought up the memory to them one night. We had never discussed that trip before - I just asked if they brought me somewhere when I was little and I asked if I was crying. They were both amazed. "You remember that? How did you remember that? You were so small!"

That is my earliest memory and it still trips me up because I could feel and sense everything but I just wasn't able to communicate verbally. I was small. So, I depended on your parents.

You kinda just live your life until things start to make sense.

But as a baby, I believe you are 100% aware of your conciousness.

That's why babies cry. You are aware of your conciousness but you cannot move your own body without someone lifting you, you can't feed yourself, and no one speaks in your way of communication until you learn english or whatever language your parents speak.

It's a traumatic experience so you are constantly crying for stuff LOL.

Feel free to share. It doesn't have to be childhood specifically (I know some of you probably don't have the greatest memory in the world) but maybe a memory from a long time ago that has stuck with you for a long time.

I'd love to hear your stories!

I remember my older sister crawling into my crib and being taken out. No idea how long though that I slept in that crib but probably at least til three.

I have a memory that is so vivid,when my Mom and I talked about it years before she passed,she couldn't understand how I could remember such a thing.I'm not sure how old I was but I know young...I'm thinking maybe around 3 if not before.We lived in a house that had an "outdoor facility",I remember it was dead of winter,and my mother carrying me wrapped in a blanket out to use the outhouse.This would have been 1954 or 1955.I remember saying to her in our conversation that this was the house on Quaker Lane and she said that yes we'd lived there but I was too young to recall such things.I double checked with my sister,who was 8 or 9 at the time...she remembers too.Hmmmm.This isn't the only childhood memory I have...there are many...from way before I started school.

Dropping an ice cream cone on the pavement. Then looking down and seeing that dead as a door nail ice cream cone all splattered and busted and feeling upset. The people around were making "aw" sounds and it made me mad because that stupid cone jumped out of my hand.

1 bruce 1 said:

Dropping an ice cream cone on the pavement.

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That's why they should put ice cream in those little plastic dishes they give you at the state fair instead of a cone.

My earliest memory is trying to pick up a big gray cat in my Grandmother's kitchen. Surprise, Surprise.

All my early memories are bad ones :/. I know I didn't have a miserable childhood so I'm sad that I don't have any good memories, but that's just what my brain decided to hold onto. But yes, frustration mostly. Knowing that an adult is being stupid or unfair or cruel or lying to me and not being able to do anything about it. The memories are almost all feelings and not events.

I also remember the way around malls, shops, neighborhoods, and houses we lived in when I was too young to (theoretically) have solid memories. If those places still exist, I feel like I would know my way around them still if I visited them now.

One particular memory I have that is an event and not just a feeling is that we were at a bakery, and I was singing to myself while trying to pick out what goodie I wanted. Some guy came up to me and asked me to sing more for him (he must have asked my mom first, or I'm pretty sure she would have clobbered him, but I didn't notice that at the time), and I was immediately Very Suspicious. My mom told me I could sing for him or not, it was OK either way. I didn't. He handed my mom a card and said that he was a child model/actor agent and if she was interested in getting me into modeling/acting to give him a call. That's what happens in Southern California, I guess! I'm glad my mom didn't choose that path; my life would have been very different. I remember my mom was visibly pregnant at the time, and I was 2 years, 4 months when my brother was born, so I must have been just around age 2.

OK, that's not exactly a BAD memory but it made me somewhat self-conscious afterward because I was afraid that if I was humming or singing some random guy would pop up and talk to me again. And I didn't like that!

I was two and a half, and Dad was putting together our new entertainment center. I remember grabbing a hammer and banging on random spots, like I thought I was helping

Waiting for my older brother to come home from kindergarten. I would wait on the front steps for his bus and when he got home, Mom would make us bologna sandwiches on toasted English muffins with mayo. She used to fold the bologna slices so they looked like nurses' hats. We would watch The New Zoo Revue while we ate our sandwiches.

New Zoo Revue - Wikipedia

I have several, in no particular chronological order. Listening to news reports about the Korean War on the radio. The day they held an air raid drill, and everyone was supposed to stay inside, but I didn't, and saw a large formation of airplanes fly over our farm. Getting on a boat and taking the 1000 Islands tour. Running around the farm with our mongrel dog as my companion. Going to Grandma's house, and my father had to stop the car to adjust the tire chains.

Sitting in my high chair while my Aunt Joan fed me tomato soup and Saltine crackers with strawberry jam. In that same house I was sitting on a trike I had been given from Santa and got my toes stuck in the pedals because I had no shoes or slippers on, same house, standing up in my crib while my mother put my new pair of white shoes on the dresser so I could see them. We moved from there to the house we had for 40 years. My mother said we moved there in August, a month before my second birthday.

My first school day (when I was about 3); I refused to sit down and I kept standing next to the door of the classroom, until my mom came to take me at home.

The situation at school did not really improve; after a while I agreed to sit down, but during the next 3 years I refused to say a word in the classroom. I was diagnosed with 'selective mutism'. I was able to talk, but I remained silent in particular circumstances/settings, like a classroom.
Everything changed when I started primary school ; from then I became the one who talked too much...

NY cat man said:

Getting on a boat and taking the 1000 Islands tour.

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We went on that 1000 Islands tour, and visited Boldt Castle, but I was older.

My first vivid memory is my first day at school aged 3 and a half - I clung to my mother for about 15 minutes in tears, refusing to let go - although I remember the arts and crafts corner cheering me up. I also have a faint memory from the age of two when I was sitting on my mother's bed in our old flat in central London.

aliceneko said:

My first vivid memory is my first day at school aged 3 and a half

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I didn't go to school until I was 6 years old.

I remember when I was about 2-3 I had on a white dress and I was with my parents in front of a huge building with wide stairs outside. I remember going down the stairs and getting in a black car. It was in the summer. Now I realize my father was graduating from seminary in Louisville. It would have been around 1955.

I remember when they brought my baby brother (who's now about 6' 4") home from the hospital.

I was the big Three ("fwee!") and daddy hauled this baby-carrier thingie to the kitchen table and placed it on top, and I climbed up on a chair to take a look.

Inside was the teensiest, weensiest bittiest little baby I'd ever seen! This was the waning days of the Baby Boom in the early 1960s. I was kinda agog. He was all pink, but kinda transparent, with this big pulsing vein in his neck. He was all scrunched up like a caterpillar, eyes closed, three or four days old.

So, I did what any red-blooded little brat would do; I poked him! And he wiggled a bit, and yawned, so wide I thought his head would crack in two.

Daddy smiled and said, that's your brother, son.

We're still talking regularly, and he suffered my cat family with amazing grace on his visit this past February.

A nice happy memory.

Years later, people tried to say I was jealous of him when he arrived. Hell no! Here was a playmate, and, most important a MAJOR distraction for Mommy!

I remember lying in my crib as a baby, crying, and my mother coming to pick me up. I remember the smile on her face well. I also remember a pull-down door in the ceiling. I asked my father about this many years later, and he was very surprised. He said that was our house in New Orleans, and it did have pull-down stairs to the attic. I was less than 2 years old. I think maybe even younger because I wasn't able to stand up in the crib.

I was just a bit past one year old. I toddled around the corner of the house to find my Uncle Artie had come to visit. He helped me onto my first tricycle but my feet wouldn't reach the pedals. We went inside where my mother fixed the mashed potatoes he loved. I think there's a photo of the event buried somewhere with all the other unidentified photos.

I was over 2 but under 3 I think. I was outside the house and my sister's friend came round to ask if she was playing out. I said she was poorly, just a cold or something.
Now the thing is, why did I remember that? It was so mundane and trivial and not really worth remembering.
Another more traumatic one, a bit later, was when my big brother (about 10yrs) said he wanted to show me something. We went into the shed and he proceeded to burn the rubber wheels of a little digger truck I had. Now that traumatised me and is worthy of remembering but the first one??