What Is Your Earliest Childhood Memory?

Discussion in 'Other Reminiscences' started by Ken Anderson, Sep 4, 2022.

  1. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    What is your earliest childhood memory, and how confident are you that it is an actual memory, as opposed to something that you were told often enough that it seems like a memory?
     
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  2. Hedi Mitchell

    Hedi Mitchell Supreme Member
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    Age of four.I was at a neighbors house, standing over a porcelain drain that was big as a bathtub. A older kid pushed me into the water that remained in the drain. It was not a lot of water but scary still. I managed to get out and start waling across the way to home. But someone had called their cows in for the day, so waited until they all crossed over and as the last one passed me, there was my mother waiting to help me home.
    Traumatic for a four year old.
     
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  3. Marie Mallery

    Marie Mallery Veteran Member
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    One of my cousins throwing 38 bullets in our fireplace and bullets shooting around the room. Nanny quit that day from what momma said. Not sure if the bullets were shooting across the room but it what I thought. I was about 4 years old.They other is chopping my index finger off at 3 and the trip to ER 30 miles away and the surgery. Good memory is running thru the woods on my donkey.
     
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  4. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    My very earliest memory is not just one incident, but it is sleeping with my mother every night. My father had a job for the rural electrification company as a lineman, and he had to stay at the office overnight in case someone had their lights go out and he was there to answer the phone and go fix the problem. Often, a squirrel got into the transformer, fried the squirrel, shorted out the transformer, and put out the electricity for that location.

    My folks had a small neighborhood grocery, and it had living quarters in the back of the store, and a little woodshed and outhouse out back.
    Mom and I lived there, and at night , after the store was closed, we slept in the little bedroom at the store, and my mother would sing me old songs, which I loved hearing her sing to me at night.
    My favorite was about the Indian Maiden, Red Wing, who lost her Warrior Brave when he was away and killed in a fight.

    I had a little Teddy Bear, made with real lambs wool, soft and curly, and when you wound it up, it would play Three Blind Mice, and I slept with that every night and loved my teddy bear dearly. I can still hear that tinkly little melody in my mind when I remember those nights.

    Years and years later, after my mom and dad passed away, and I was going through the stuff stored away, I found the teddy bear.
    Then realized that this was a brand new one, still in the box.
    My mom knew how much I loved my teddy bear, so she got me another one and stored it away, just in case something happened to the original one.

    I vaguely remember my third birthday at the store; so the memory of mom singing to me at night was probably around that same age.
     
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    Last edited: Sep 4, 2022
  5. Nancy Hart

    Nancy Hart Veteran Member
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    Verifiable is tough because it has to be something no one talked about later. And pinning down your age at the time is even harder.

    I think 3.5 years is the earliest. I remember when a picture was taken at a family reunion. I was pouting about having to wear a dress outside. I got the "no pouting " lecture at the time, but it was never mentioned again.

    Also remember my cousin standing up in the seat of our pickup truck while my father was driving. Her parents allowed her to do that, but mine didn't. I joined her without asking. I know nothing was ever said about it afterwards, because I was expecting another lecture, and it didn't happen. I was on the tall side and didn't touch the ceiling.

    It would be interesting to know if one can remember music earlier than events. My mother had the radio going constantly before we had TV. A few VERY old obscure songs have popped into my head from out of nowhere, before Youtube. But my father was always singing, so there's no way to test when I first heard them.
     
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  6. Al Amoling

    Al Amoling Veteran Member
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    I remember we were at my grandmothers house for her birthday and we were in the living room because one of the radio station was supposed play a special sonf for her...no special song came but the announcement that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor...
     
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  7. Mary Stetler

    Mary Stetler Veteran Member
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    Several things came back to me but I am not sure which is the first.
    I was a very quiet kid and my mother enrolled me in nursery school after my sister was born , around age 3. There was a boy who picked on me every day when teacher was busy. I begged not to go back but my mother took me anyway. Finally I was on a jungle gym type structure. Probably very small but to me it was large. The boy came and pried my fingers off the bars so I fell down. I did not let go of my mother and kept crying till she let me stay home after that.
     
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  8. Thomas Stillhere

    Thomas Stillhere Very Well-Known Member
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    I have actual memory from around the age of still being dressed. I can remember vividly being dressed on the dining table. I remember my sand box and new plastic cups all bright colors, a thick oil petroleum smell because the plastics of the late 40s and early 50s used a lot of oil to produce products. I remember those bubble baths and all the little colored lights made from the bubble soap. Today at 74 I still have more early memory than older and sometimes I struggle to remember names and events that haven't been needed for decades. It's like all the unimportant things get stuffed into another drawer and it takes a while for my brain to find it, but it is still there. They say certain flying insects have a memory made of millions of photo sensors and that is how they maneuver in our world and can find their way back to their nest and so on. Their so called eyes take photos and store them like a road map. They do not see as we do, this is evident if you watch one struggle to go through a closed glass window, it will kill itself attempting to traverse that clear window and it could turn around 180 degrees and be free to find itself the right path. It gets to be frustrating to not be able to remember simple things that you remember an hour later.
     
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  9. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    I remember being carried across the creek (Little River, actually) by my dad, who was visiting my grandmother, who lived on the other side of the creek. My older brother told me that I couldn't possibly have remembered my paternal grandparents because they died before I was born but, as it turns out, my paternal grandmother was still alive, and living there, when I was between two and three years old. Given that no one, to my knowledge, ever told me that he carried me over there, taking the shortcut across the creek and through the woods, I am persuaded that it was an early memory. I have no memory of my grandmother on my father's side. I remember being carried across the creek to someone else's house, I don't think I knew whose at the time. I was at least eight years old before I learned that my grandparents used to live in that house, as another relative was living there later. It's an actual river because it feeds into Lake Michigan, but it's pretty narrow and shallow, and wouldn't come up to an adult's knees. In fact, there were rocks that could be used to avoid even getting your feet wet, but it was probably scary or exciting to me.
     
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  10. Thomas Stillhere

    Thomas Stillhere Very Well-Known Member
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    1177.jpg In this photo I was probably less than two years old but I have a stuffed dog that I named Derwood after the announcer on the Gary Moore morning show in the early 50s, his name was Derwood Kirby. The stuffed dog was left out in the rain overnight and in this photo I remember it smelling a bit doggy. I remember those early visits to family and what was happening even at such an early age.
     
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