What’s your first memory?

Interesting topic!
My first memory is from when I was 3-ish. I was in my crib in my bedroom. The room was really dark but the door was open and the hallway light was on. I could hear that my parents were having some sort of party and I can remember being mad that I was stuck in my room and couldn’t be at the party.
It’s weird and maybe it’s not exactly a memory because I can actually picture my darkened bedroom and the crib rails and the hallway with the light on in my head. Even now. Is that normal?

Ok, so at this point it’s a memory of having a memory, because it’s the moment of remembering that I remember…

Anyway - when I was a teenager, probably around 15-17 (I suppose it’s kind of ironic that I can’t remember exactly when I had this memory), I was just getting into the band The Who.
I was listening to the album ‘Quadrophenia’ for the first time, the song ‘5:15’ came on and suddenly I had this vivid image in my head of myself as a small child, standing in the backyard, doing the ‘pat your head, rub your tummy’ thing while this song was playing in the background.

I have no idea if this actually happened, there is evidence for and against it.

First, the memory image is accurate in that, we had a sweet stereo system in our den, and often had it cranked with the den sliding-glass-door open so we could listen to music while in the back yard.
Next, the me I pictured in my head looked to be about 4-5 years old (though I find it dubious that I’d have a ‘3rd person’ view of myself in a memory) - the album Quadrophenia was released in late 1973, when I would’ve been 4 years old.
For a long time, I assumed that, since a single from that album would’ve played on the radio when I was exactly the age in the memory, that it must’ve been real.

However, years later (after the moment of remembering), thanks to the internet, I learned that ‘5:15’ was not released as a single in the US until the movie soundtrack was released in 1979. I was definitely not a 9,10,11 year old in the memory, that was clear.

Although - no one in my family owned the '73 album until I bought it in the '80s, so I could’ve only heard it on the radio. If we were listening to rock music on the radio in the '70s, it would’ve been on WBCN, who were revolutionary in those days for playing album tracks, not just radio-singles.

I did have the sense, in the memory, that little me was familiar with and recognized the ‘train song’ as a favorite.
If WBCN’s DJs and listeners liked the song, single or not, it would’ve been played often and little me would’ve been plenty familiar with it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think it’s got to be a real memory, because it was so vivid and I can’t think of any way it could’ve been falsely planted in my memory - as opposed to other earlier ‘memories’ I have that I can peg as questionably real memories because they are possibly based around photographs.

E.g., I have a memory of my first kiss, when I was 3 or 4, with my little neighbor-friend-playmate. Thing is - there has always been a snapshot of this moment in our family photo album (parents must have staged the pic, asked us to do it again for the camera, because I can’t imagine they were ready with the camera for this spontaneous moment). My memory of the moment is an entire scene w/ lots of details - I remember my bedroom, my crib, the quality of the sunlight coming through the windows, my excitement at being told, “Stacy’s here to see you” as my mother dressed me, running down stairs to greet Stacy at the door where ‘the kiss’ happened.
Despite the details, I have this suspicion that I don’t really remember the actual moment, just the photo and the often told story behind it.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

These days, well, I can barely remember starting this long story…

I’ve asked a lot of my patients this question. What I’ve learned is for the majority it’s something big, usually traumatic. It makes sense, as a small child we live a pretty routine life. When something occurs that’s a major bump in the road it implants itself in our memories. As I mentioned in the other thread, along with my dog/stuffed monkey story, for me it was being just about 3 and getting my tonsils out. I vividly remember being in the hospital and in that crib bed. I can see the rails being brought up like I was being put in jail. Though I also remember the treat of having ice cream so my throat would feel better. In a way I envy those whose earliest memory is something loving and sweet.

first Memory…waking up in a dark movie theatre, and loudly saying “where am I” (could have been where are we…) I would have been 3, nearly 4 years old.
the movie?
Return of the Jedi.
right about a minute into this scene:

so if you were in Lima, Ohio in 1983, and saw ROTJ in the theater at Eastgate, I’m sorry if I ruined your film watching experience…

From the moment I first opened my eyes…

I am really enjoying these answers. Thanks. It’s interesting to me : our youngest is just older than 2 and since I’m off early from work every day we spend a lot of time together in the afternoons doing fun stuff.

She loves her Clawz shoes from this site. She calls them her silly Crocs and we walk around the neighborhood, or drive to the children’s museum that’s about 20 minutes up the road. Or we will make ice cream comes or have nature walks (bugs and edible flowers!) — recently, we paddled around in a canoe in a vacant lot that floods sometimes in the rain, and saw some baby ducks.

I have been asked a few times why I’m doing all these fun things with her before she’s old enough to remember them. But I always say that I will remember them and that’s why we do it. I know it’s helping her learn and it is a ton of fun for both of us. But at 26 months she’s not likely to be recalling any of it as an adult.

She’s got a great memory. But I bet it will be another year before she’s doing things she’ll remember as an adult. I am moving her out of her crib and into a “toddler bed” this weekend because she climbed out of the crib the other day and fell. (No broken arm, thankfully!) So, maybe her earliest memory will be rolling out of the new bed and whamming onto the floor. I hope not!

Anyway, thanks for sharing your memories. And thanks to @Gypsigirl213 for a great thread!

I can’t forget that I don’t remember . . .

I was just shy of two. My brother, who was 5 or 6 mo was in a swing thing. Mom had been feeding him. She answered the phone. He started crying. I started feeding him. Likely I got food all over his face but I don’t remember that.

Earlier in this thread I remembered something from when I was 2.5, dreamt about it when I was 5, woke up and wasn’t sure how old I was as I was thinking the age 2.5 thing I remembered had just happened but I knew I was older than that. I finally woke up enough to realize I was 5.

I was 2.5, we were in a motor boat in Miami (visiting one of mom’s cousins that summer - I now know headed south based on the visuals of my memory) and I was watching all the hotels and weird looking trees - palm trees - go by. My brother was in some sort of seat that had a wheel attached. I thought he was steering the boat and didn’t believe it when I was told he wasn’t. I remember seeing the other steering wheel in the boat (chrome) and wanting to turn that one. I wasn’t allowed.

When I was 3 dad fed us ice cream for breakfast. Mom yelled down the stairs, “What did you feed the kids? They are so quiet”. I ran into the living room and crouched behind a chair and woofed down the ice cream thinking she was going to come down and take it away from us. I got my first ice cream headache (likely why I remember this).

I remember walking around the kitchen lookin up at the countertops, watching a cat run by me and out the back door (so 3 or younger based on when we moved).

In the same house I stepped on a bee, got stung, mom lied and told me it would stop hurting if I swung on the swing. I had just started swinging when some kids I had never met came over and I was told to give them the swing. I was pissed and didn’t get why I had to give up the swing for strangers when I was supposed to be on it to make the stinging stop. So they sat on the sandbox since I refused to get off.

Also in the same house I was taken to nursery school when two months shy of 3, shown that the hook with the lamb sticker was the one where I was to put my jacket. At the same place (a church) I remember a Sunday school teacher putting my snow pants on my and her cold hand touched my bare bum. Apparently I hadn’t put underwear on when I dressed myself and she wanted to know why mom didn’t put it on me. I informed her I was old enough to dress myself.

Same house I was just a bit over 3, my 18 or so month brother ran out the front door naked into the snow, mom ran after him yelling for him to stop.

I was 3 years and 2 weeks old and sat on the edge of my parent’s bed holding my new baby sister across my legs and my 18 mo old brother was sitting next to me.

Same house sitting in the bathroom with mom picking ticks off of us and out of our hair throwing them in the toilet (our house had a field behind it with tall grass).

My dad took me to post office/gas station/general store (same house). Someone had a greyhound dog. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t ride the horsey (it was taller than I was).

I also had a recurrent nightmare living at that same house. I remember where my bed was in that room and I’d hold my one hand around my pointer finger pretending my hand was the mom (so I was the mom) hugging the child (the pointer finger).

Same town, I was 3, my 18 mo old brother climbed a gravestone and knocked it over. 10ish years later we were back visiting and my youngest sister did the same thing to the same gravestone.

Same town I remember chasing fire flies in the backyard, going to what I now know was the boy scout jamboree, listening to what I now know was a carillon (in high school I started to play one near where we then lived), taking the train to visit my grandparents…

I wish I remembered repeatedly meeting Einstein when my dad was in school. I was 18 mo or younger. My mom would walk me in a stroller and would see him many days. I wish she had taken a photo. Apparently he talked to himself a lot and was often rumpled looking with wild hair (mom told me this when I was in grade school). At first she thought he was a crazy man until someone told her who he was.

And then there was the time I could have risked my dad’s new job. Likely I remember that because my parents, for years, wouldn’t me forget it. I was when I was 4. We had just moved, been there two weeks. I was at the new church for the first time (big city, 3rd biggest in that city, 3 minister church, dad was not yet 30, attorneys, doctors, business execs were the kind of families who went there, church housing provided was the “small” house at around 3000 sf), this was my dad’s second job. The sunday school teacher said to me (after she asked a question), “I’m sure you know the answer. Your daddy is the new minister here.”. I said, “The hell I do”. She said, “Where did you learn that word?”. I said, “My daddy uses that word at home all the time”. Not what needed to get out around that prim and proper church with him being a young, new minister. He managed to keep his job there for 16 years so I guess I didn’t do that much damage but my parents were horrified when I told them, after they asked me how it was, that I got in trouble and repeated the story

Gosh I remember a lot more than I though I did when I started my answer. And as I am thinking about it more memories are coming to me. There is more but I’ll stop. Roughly two and a half seems about the earliest. A lot of those memories are very visual.

The first thing I remember
I was lying in my bed
I couldn’t of been no more
Than one or two
I remember there’s a radio
Comin’ from the room next door
And my mother laughed
The way some ladies do
When it’s late in the evening
And the music’s seeping through

I remember the day my parents brought home some noisy thing in a blue blanket. I was 60 days short of my second birthday. The noisy thing came with some cool toys but when I tried to play with them I got the, “Those are for the baby!” chastisement. — I thought I WAS the baby. But alas, my reign was over. Thus began a brutal sibling rivalry that lasted nearly 20 years.

In St Louis, probably 2 years old. Couple of memories from then…No pics so it’s all me.

Dad was a USMC recruiter but was home with me during the day for some reason. My Mom wasn’t there, maybe still in the hospital after my brother was born? We lived in a duplex on Peace Drive and I went outside to ride my trike in the driveway. I guess I was trying to do donuts with it (!) because I ended up falling and cutting my knee on some broken glass (Still have the upside-down high heel shoe scar on my knee). Daddy picked me up and carried me inside. “Lassie” was on.

I remember that he had a watermelon patch in the back and yelled at neighborhood boys when they ran through it.

I remember catching lightning bugs in a jar (sorry, little guys, I didn’t know any better ) . I haven’t seen any in awhile; been in FL for 40+ but I miss them!

I remember going to a neighborhood swingset and sitting in the 2-seater thing. Some boys came by and pushed the swing so hard I went really high and got scared. They wouldn’t stop. Maybe they were the ones my Dad yelled at. Maybe they didn’t like the way I looked (my Mom is Japanese so there’s THAT). Would have been 1960 so after WW2 but before Nam but still a ‘thing’ for some. Eventually they got bored, I guess.

I’ve seen pics of little me in a little rocking chair wearing a little kimono. But, as hard as I try, I really don’t remember it. I would have been around 1 to 1-1/2.

Thanks for the topic! It’s been fun remembering plus reading the others’…How similar some of these are!

My mom asking me if I wanted to feel the baby moving in her tummy. My sister was born in March 1951, so I was just about 3-1/2. It’s the first memory I have that I haven’t seen a picture of, which (as someone said earlier) would actually be a memory of a picture.

@llangley: Coincidentally, my son (now living in Raleigh, NC and soon to be 49) and I were chatting just last week about catching fireflies in our backyard back in 1976. I haven’t seen any in the entire area for at least 10 years, and I too miss them. Mayo jars with holes poked in the lids. Rule of the house was that they had to be released within one hour.

Earliest memory for me is somewhere between age one and two. My future adoptive mother was babysitting my for half siblings and my biological mother and her boyfriend showed up late at night, after midnight. My mom is fussing because the whole house was asleep. One of my brothers picks me up to take me to their car. I can hear my incubator tell him “put her back down. She stays here.”
I can remember standing between my adoptive dads legs and him tuning his big guitar. I’m plucking and trying to turn the tuning pegs to match the sounds he made. My mom is at the side of the bed folding laundry and he turns to her, saying “I wish she was older. I wish I had more time.” Mama kind of laughed it off and told him I’d be big enough soon enough and he would have the time then. A week later he was gone and I was in traction fighting for my life from a rollover accident. A month later I turned there years old.