What is your oldest memories ?

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This isn't my earliest memory, but it is a particularly relevant and pivotal one that helped, in its own small way, determine the sort of person I would be when I grew up.

I had just walked outside during my fourth birthday party. I stood on the back porch with a red helium-filled balloon on a string in my right hand. I was feeling a rush of chemicals sweeping through my brain. I recognized the feeling; my brain was imprinting everything that was happening to me. This was going to be one of those moments I would always remember. It felt like it was going to be a big one, too.

As I crossed the porch and headed down the steps, the thought occurred that some memories that seemed important to me now, like whatever I had just been doing inside, would one day be gone. When I was older, what I thought of as "my life" was going to be composed solely of these moments where my brain was doing this funny thing it did.

As I walked past the birdbath and headed towards the open lawn area, the thought disturbed me. It didn't seem right that some of the stuff happening to me wouldn't become "me." I worried that something was wrong with me. I briefly considered telling Mom and Dad, trying to get them to take me to a hospital.

As I stood at the edge of the clearing, looking at the lawn and the row of trees around the edge, I figured this was probably how things worked for most people, and that I probably wouldn't be able to make Mom and Dad understand what I was trying to tell them anyway. I didn't want to get them upset during my party, and I didn't really want to go to see the doctor. This was just something I had to learn to live with.

It seemed unfair to me. Both the whole situation in general, and this specific instance in particular. I had just been inside, having a great time with friends and family at my birthday party, and I wasn't going to remember any of that. I was going to remember standing alone, outside, doing nothing. What was I supposed to be doing with these memories? What did you do at a time like this?

I let go of the balloon. I watched it float up for a few minutes, blow out over the trees, getting smaller and smaller.

I could feel the chemicals in my head running out. I headed around the side of the house to go through the front door and rejoin the celebration. I was going to have to think about all this some more... some other day. I was no longer quite as worried about everything as I had been. It was time to enjoy my party.

i rmeber most stuff from 3 and upwards but flashes of tings b4 that point.. im sure i can remember a snippet of a hospital ward, knwoing the roof was sloping slightly down wards and lots of crying babies and nurses... but the onyl time i went in hosptial at that young age was to be born. i knwo for a fact i didnt go to hospital for any reasons after that till i was like 12...

so maybe i rember what it was like to be a couple of days old lol

A couple...

For some reason, I think the earliest was me standing in the hall of the old house in Connecticut one evening--I might've been about a year old. That's about it.,,

When I was two, I came down with a serious flu that almost killed me. Luckily, all I remember from it was my mother giving me Peptol-Bismol, and me subsequently vomiting pink liquid into a garbage bin.

Another time, probably around the same age, being up in the attic, sitting near the top of the stairs, and being upset because my parents wouldn't let me cross the attic to where they were.

I remember staring at the wallpaper in the kitchen of my parent's house. We moved in when I was about 2 or 3 years old. Not long after that, they renovated the kitchen. The wallpaper had all these bright, geometric flowers drawn on it in bright colors. Instead of thinking they were flowers though, I thought they were gears to a big machine, and that they would all rotate and mesh together when the "machine" was running!

I remember not understanding what people said to me. I remember falling and cutting my chin and lip open. I remember our house being very cold and dark like a cave. Also going on a train and being terrified of it. A very nice one was my mother singing in Spanish.

I've read somewhere that your oldest memories define who you are. I have two very strong Early Childhood Memories that stand out. The one about watching The Monkees, which I've already mentioned, and there's another one.

When I was Five, I went on a Field Trip to Victoria, BC with my Pre-School. All of us kids were together with all of our Teachers and Parents. Mainly our Mothers. Us kids got to explore the inside of a Routemaster. We were running up and down the stairs and through both decks of the Bus.

Now I'm stuck in the Mid to Late 1960s and I'm obsessed with Routemasters.

me i can remember not being able to walk til i was 6. i clearly remember pre school it was all kids in wheelchairs or some form of speical need were tehy werent able to walk without a walker or crutches or in a chair. I guess I can relate to cockneyrebel because once when some teacher took me from the nurse to the classroom he placed me on his shoulders and while talking to my parents or another teacher he stood near doorway of my classroom and I reached out towards some big gray box thing at top of the classroom door(closer on door) at time I had no idea what it was for. then in early high school I realized that I have had an interest back then in kindergrarten since I always kept reaching up and looking at that thing up there wondering what it was for and what it was. I was also a tomboy I would never go near a barbiedoll or housemaking toy. I was more of lego builder, puzzle maker, bike rider and still am accept now it includes computers also. for some reason have always loved mechanical objects. I guess thats why in kindergarten and from then on being soo into things.

The earliest memory I have is from when I was only around a year old. My parents and I went to niagara falls in my dad's old blue ford truck, and I remember sleeping in the back. I woke up in the middle of the night, and it was sort of chilly and dark, except for the bit of light coming through the windows on the cab...

The earliest I can remember is being the "under the lights" for jaundice. I was a month old at the time. My eyes were covered so the grow lamps wouldn't damage my eyes. What I remember was that I couldn't see!

I can also remember being scared of the noises our water softener made.

Our neigbhors outdoor lights were yellow and he would leave them on all night which would shine in on my window and cast an erie shadow on the wall of my room.

I can remember laying in my crib and listening to the TV as my parents watched "love boat"

I have a similar memory. Only the event was thanksgiving 1981, right before I turned two years old. One of my uncles (who at the time was a senior in high school) picked me up over my head and held my up by the celing. I remember vivdly the intense feeling of terror I felt and the celing tile pattern.

I can barely remember things I did this year. I have horrible memory for the past, I can remember odd isolated events but it is hard for me to remember what I remember or where it came from.

My earliest memory is from when I was 14 months old. My parents, aunty and I were having a holiday at a caravan park in Nambucca Heads on the North Coast of New South Wales. To get from this beach area to the caravan park we had to ford this creek, and it was full of these little crabs, and they scared me and I started crying so my aunty carried me on her shoulders and crossed the creek to my Dad waiting at the caravan park on the other side.

I remember it so clearly, yet I could barely walk or speak at that time ... strange.

My earliest memory that I can actually date is from the summer of 1982 when I was probably 18-20 months old. We'd gone on a camping trip to Nova Scotia and had visited some land my father owned there. There had once been a house there, but it had burned down some years before, and as I was climbing into the car (I had just recently gotten big enough to do this by myself) I looked back over my left shoulder at the few charred beams sticking up out of the field where the house had been. At the time I didn't know where exactly we were, but I did realize that there had been a house there at one point and this seemed like a big revelation to me at the time.

Also, I think it was on the same camping trip, I remember we drove up Mt. Washington, and part of the way up my sister poked me or got my attention in same way and indicated that I should look out the window. I did and I saw all the land, houses, roads, and cars spread out below like little toys.
And it's interesting to note that I can't remember how my sister communicated that I should look out of the window, in a lot of my earliest memories I can remember people communicating some point to me, but I can't ever remember them actually speaking. Weird.

I also remember being kind of fascinated with the outdoor water faucets at campgrounds around the same time.

And I can remember learning to climb out of my crib, or rather I remember finally growing big enough that I could climb out.

I remember falling into the creek by my grandparents house and almost drowning. There was a small bridge across a deeper section and submerged in the water there was some kind of pump or something, so I squatted down to look more closely at it and the next thing I knew I was underwater looking at it very close-up. I remember not really being afraid or anything, just kind of surprised and intrigued. Luckily my father just happened to look out the window of the house at the exact moment that I fell in. I don't think I was much older than about 2 at the time.

That sounds interesting, are you sure? I have a few memories which I find hard to recall when I'm awake, but I'm pretty sure the recurring dreams of things pulsating to and fro are a very earl childhood memory - but I have no idea whether that would be prenatal, perinatal or just an uncle throwing me towards the ceiling as you should with children so they get a sense of t(h)rust (provided the catching works equally well) ;-)

Later on, I can only recall the christening of my sister who is three years younger (but don't jump to conclusions about anyone's beliefs just because of a ceremony held for relatives) and a few details about the frogs we held in a plastic basin maybe a year later (one of them died because of my clumsiness with the lid, which was a traumatic experience for both me and my mother, whose seemingly overly emotional response I can still recall - not that I wasn't sad myself). I have quite a good memory about most of the places we went in the next few years, though (my parents went to work abroad for a year taking us along, so we relocated every few months - I actually inquired when we would change places again when they had finally settled down in a tiny claustropobic village ...)

My recall of anything before age 5 is a blur, to say the least. But the specific memories I do have from age 3-4 all involve the following:

- Being taken with my mother and grandmother on long country walks.
- On said walks, being mesmerised by the local road signs.
- Watching TV, but specifically TV idents (no recollection of actual programmes!)
- Fortnightly trips to the Social Security offices (!)

I have a very good memory.

Learning how to walk is my earliest memory too. It's vague, I remember being upset because the others could walk but not me, thats not fair, and the feeling in my thighs as my legs carried my weight, it felt really good and I just wanted to walk all the time.

My mother told me she got tired of holding me so she placed me next to our round dining table. I held on with both hands and walked on my own. Learning how to walk was my first obsession I think.

Oh yeah, when I was about three I took dancing lessons, at the end of the seasson there was a ball. At one point someone lifted me up and placed me on the stage while the ochestra was playing. I felt so proud sitting there and honestly thought that the other people believed I was part of the band.

I clearly remember a feeling of greatness. I was so cold and could do anything.