What was your first memory?

[MomofKatie]

My family lived in my aunt's basement apartment until I was three, but we spent a lot of time "upstairs." My aunt had a small-screen large console TV and I was lying on the sofa, drinking a bottle of milk and watching some farm show when the farmer began to feed a baby animal (goat, lamb?) with a bottle! I looked at the TV, looked at my bottle, made the connection, and promptly threw my bottle across the room, never to have another one. I think I was about two years old at the time.

Queen Colleen

My mom had a much younger sister who they were having trouble getting to give up her bottles- i think she was around 3. There were puppies on the Howdy Doody show that were being bottle feed, and they got my Aunt to box up her bottles to send to the puppies. Many years later, going through my Grampy's house after he died, my aunt found her lovingly packed box of bottles in a corner of the basement. She was so mad my mom didn't actually send them to the Howdy Doody puppies!

 

[scrhsa]

After a car wreck. I remember my Mom holding me while she called my Dad from a strangers house. The nice lady gave my sister and I some cookies and we were feeding them to the German Shepard. Mom was fussing at us but the lady said it was ok. I was somewhere around a year old.

 

[SallySkelington]

Sticking my finger in an outlet at preschool. It probably shocked the rest of my memories out of my brain because I attempted it again.... I think I've mentioned this before, but I wasn't the brightest bulb in the box.

 

[Micca]

Probably around 3 or 4 years old. We lived on the top floor of an old hotel in a small rural town, mom used to go out on the roof of the building to hang laundry to dry on the line. I also recall a little gift shop where I got a little ceramic Mickey Mouse dressed in his band leader uniform. My parents replaced several of those because I kept breaking them.

In the process of summoning this memory I just remembered that I only went to kindergarten for one semester. I have a November birthday and I was only 4 years old when school started in the fall. I was 5 in time for the spring semester and they let me join the class "already in progress."

 

[wenrob]

Sticking my finger in an outlet at preschool. It probably shocked the rest of my memories out of my brain because I attempted it again.... I think I've mentioned this before, but I wasn't the brightest bulb in the box.

When I was a kid my grandparents had these little, working, kid's irons they'd give to us to play with. If they were in the 'on' position you'd get the shock of your life when you plugged them in. I can't tell you how many times I was shocked by those things. I think about it now and I wonder what the hell the manufacturer and my grandparents were thinking giving little kids real irons to play with let alone ones that would shock the crap out of you when you plugged them in.

 

[PollyannaMom]

I can clearly picture the apartment we lived in when I was small, and my dad's business - but we didn't move until I was almost five, so I'm not sure how far back the memories are really from.

I think the earliest thing I can be sure of timing-wise was running around a swing set at at hotel, with my friend and her older sister, when I was 3. Our families were traveling together, and I was so glad to be out of the car!

 

[adisneyaunt]

I am always amazed at people that have these concise early recollections...
I seriously don't have them. My earliest solid memory is being on a Florida vacation... and met a friend of my parents, he was a funny guy and had all of us kids stand behind a big palm tree and then one by one we would jump out ... like out of no where...and we were all filmed on one of those reel to reels. ( we have all looked at those teels.. which were converted to cds, when my mom passed)
...We Then saw him climb that palm tree with no aids, bring down some coconuts and we all got to try the coconut milk. We were all in awe, lol.
I believe I was about 6. I really don't recall before that... strange when I think about it... not even kindergarten things??? Oh well...

 

[Gumbo4x4]

Seeing my dad's horse outside my window. I'm told "horse" was my first word and I was often found standing in the crib excitedly watching the horse as an infant/toddler. I couldn't say how old my oldest "real" memory of thst is. Surely younger than 3.

 

[Atlas722]

In the first half of the 1960s my mom's parents lived in an apartment house in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and they were the building's custodians. I remember my grandpa's 1950s Ford car.

I also remember when my grandpa, my dad, and my uncle Larry would enter the apartment house's basement. It had an exterior entrance in the back that was reached via a concrete stairway from the back entrance. They would go into the basement to clean the incinerator.

 

[Gary M]

I was 2 or 3 years old. My father was in WW ll and ended up in hospitals in England and then Texas. When he came home my mother told me he was about to arrive at our apartment. I stood looking out the screen door and he showed up in a taxi. Even though that was at least 72 years ago, I can still see in my memory the arrival.

 

[ols386]

I think my first memory was being in my kindergarten class, and Mrs Daugherty was my teacher. She had kindergarten class in her home. She taught for many many years.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Reading all of yours, I remember quite a few. I'm not sure which came first.

I remember being on a road trip, sleeping in the back of the station wagon (!), and waking up to a) being at a McDonalds, seeing the golden arches, and b) pulling into a Holiday Inn and being too sleepy to walk so carried inside.

My father was an avid newspaper reader, and I remember on one of these trips (often to NYC/Atlantic City, NJ areas, before casinos), he went out to get a newspaper and was held up with a knife and robbed, I remember his coming back to the hotel room all stressed out and blurting out the story, lol. (Not that that was funny but just chuckling thinking about it right now; he later used to tell the story frequently, too, and imitate the robbers: "Gimme the money, gimme the money!")

I remember many days being so happy when my father came home from work and sitting on his knee while he ate his dinner.

I, too, remember mindlessly sticking a key inside an electrical outlet and ZAP! Yeah, I never did that again, either. Covers were a good invention!

I remember running on a commercial building's rooftop once and falling through some sort of dome, only to be caught by a board going across the bottom, looking down at the cement floor a couple of stories below. I was screaming and crying, and thankfully there was a man on a ladder painting the house next door who somehow heard me, and ran over and pulled me out. I remember lots about that building, which was a total hazard for a kid to be running around, as it was my father's business.

Lastly, I think probably one of my earliest memories was standing by our den and realizing my chest was going in and out and wondering why - my earliest understanding of the breathing process! Ha!

 

[Sparkly]

I remember being taken by bus to the next town to go shopping and I definitely remember still being in a pushchair.

 

[ToliBera]

waking up when I was 2 years old. (I think it was after a nap?) and going down stairs on my butt to hug my mum as she was getting ready for a party

 

[Alice Hart]

I can vaguely remember between years 2 and 3. My Pops was in the Naval Service so all of my first memories are of me and my mum and our dog Trixie. She was a peekapoo.

 

[Alice Hart]

Sticking my finger in an outlet at preschool. It probably shocked the rest of my memories out of my brain because I attempted it again.... I think I've mentioned this before, but I wasn't the brightest bulb in the box.

I did a similar thing. My mum wore bobbypins (spelling ?) and I used to stick them into the wall sockets to see the blue spark. Of course every time I did this a fuse broke. It took my parents some time before they caught me doing it and figured out why the lights kept failing.

 

[DebbieB]

JFK Funeral, I was almost 4. I remember the horses and the caisson.

 

[holden]

My 2nd birthday party at Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor.

Was Farrell's a chain? I remember it from my childhood too!

 

[Simba's Mom]

My first memory was of me, when I was 3 yo, standing next to our car, on a hill, in a big rain storm. I was afraid to step across the water because it was moving so fast. Later I found out that that was in 1955 and there was a big Hurricane in Massachusetts (where this happened).

 

[JoanneAZ]

I was about 2 1/2. I was at Disneyland watching the fireworks at night with my family. We were standing about where the Partners statue is now, my Mom was holding me on her hip. At the point where Tinkerbell normally flew, someone else flew instead. I asked my mother who the lady was and she said "That's Mary Poppins". I asked her who Mary Poppins was and she told me "She's a lady from a Disney movie".

I also have a distinct memory of falling from the top bunk of the bunk beds in the room I shared with my older brother. I wanted to cry but I didn't because I wasn't supposed to be up there because I might fall off and I didn't want to get in trouble. LOL