What's your earliest memory?

[DannyW]

I have two little grand girls, aged 1.5 and 2.5 years old. I see them 1-2 days a week and we have a grand time taking walks around the neighborhood, playing and having tea parties (no...don't go there!) But if I drop dead tomorrow, I wonder if at their age whether they will remember any of this. Or me.

In the late 1950's, due to work, my grandparents relocated for a few years from Rabun County to downtown Atlanta. They lived on 10th street, which back then was nothing like it is now.

My sister was born in 1961. I was 3 years and 4 months old. I can distinctly remember staying at my grandparent's home for a few days when she was born. That's my earliest memory....at about 3 1/2 YO.

How far can you go back?

 

[fishfryer]

I have two little grand girls, aged 1.5 and 2.5 years old. I see them 1-2 days a week and we have a grand time taking walks around the neighborhood, playing and having tea parties (no...don't go there!) But if I drop dead tomorrow, I wonder if at their age whether they will remember any of this. Or me.

In the late 1950's, due to work, my grandparents relocated for a few years from Rabun County to downtown Atlanta. They lived on 10th street, which back then was nothing like it is now.

My sister was born in 1961. I was 3 years and 4 months old. I can distinctly remember staying at my grandparent's home for a few days when she was born. That's my earliest memory....at about 3 1/2 YO.

How far can you go back?

I remember catching a fish at two.

 

[westcobbdog]

I can remember m grandparents large circa 1900 house in Decatur on Sycamore Street, especially a large canvas tent they had set up in the back yard. Born in 61' and by late 63' they sold it to a developer and moved to Chastain Park on Powers Feery Rd. So at 2 years old I could remember that house.

 

[ugajay]

I remember rolling a stick with a duck that had rubber feet that flapped every time the wheel turned over in the house I lived in until we moved when I was 2-3

 

[SarahFair]

Very young.
My mom leaning over my crib singing to me is the earliest, no idea how old I was.

My uncle coming to visit at the house and being in a high chair at the dinner table.

 

[Redbow]

I remember when my Aunt caught me watering her small chicks I was dipping them up and down in the water pail. My Aunt stopped me from drowning her little chicks, I was about 3 years old at the time.

 

[huntersluck]

Around 4 years old

 

[Ruger#3]

I remember farm activities at about 2. Feeding chickens, gardening and hog killing time. My grandma made us a treat, pig skins. My grandfather taught me to make a fish line by bending a straight pin and using sewing thread. I’d catch minnows from the creek put them jar to dump in the well.

 

[Nicodemus]

I remember going turkey hunting with my Granddaddy and watching my Grandmother making biscuits. Those are among my earliest memories.

 

[krizia829]

Without seeing photos of things we did together, I can remember up to like 6 years old or so. I lost my dad's mom when I was very young. I was about 12 years old but I have lots of great memories with her. She would've been 105 this year.

I unfortunately never got to meet my dad's dad. He passed away in my dad's arms on Father's Day back in the early 80's. I only know him by 2 photos I've ever seen of him! He would've also been 105 this year.

I lost my mom's mom almost 6 years ago and I remember more with her at such a young age because our school bus would drop my brother and I off at her house until my parents got home from work every day. We'd spend all summer at her house while school was out simply because we lived next door. I saw her much more often than my dad's mom. She would been 90 this year.

My mom's dad is still here with us. He will be 90 this year! Most of my memories with him involve hunting and shooting at the range. He gifted me 3 guns that I will cherish forever! Fun fact about him: he built a personal submarine many, many years ago which he later traded for some dive gear and my Ruger 44 carbine he gifted me! He used to love to free dive and spear fish down to about 80'!

Grandparents are truly the best. I see how my parents are with my daughters, now 3 and 6, and I know they will remember many things after they're gone. I just pray that they can be here as long as possible and in good health!

 

[TurkeyH90]

Finally caught a rabbit in my rabbit box when my sister was born. Unfortunately I was at my grandparents and not there to check it for a few days. I would have been about 3. I also remember pulling up my stringer with a catfish I caught and a moccasin was latched onto his side. I dropped it quick. I was around 4.

 

[basstrkr]

Straight answer: I fell out of the bed at about 2 YO. Didn't hurt but I remember my Mom having a hissy.

Funny answer: When I was born I remember the doctor slapping me so hard it was almost a year before I could walk.

 

[GeorgiaBob]

Lubbock, Texas in January just after a snow. I was about 17 months old. I remember clearly (even now, at a time I can't remember if I turned off the coffee maker after I rinsed the pot this morning) the whiteness, the smell and the taste of the snow on either side of the walk. I know, from a single black and white photograph in a family album the day and the reason I was in the snow - but I don't "remember" any of those details.

That memory is still sharp but it is composed more of impressions, sensations, smells, and tactile experience. I think the fact that very young minds have not yet developed a vocabulary or a means to file experiences is the reason toddlers don't "remember" specific experiences. Before you can inventory and date something, you cannot really remember it in the sense of being able to recall something associated with a time and place.

My "memory" is clear of the cold snow filled morning because the experience was unique in my tiny mind AND isolated from any other experience. That morning was the only time, before I was 8 years old, I had a hands on experience with snow, freezing temperatures, and bright sunshine. That memory was reinforced and fixed in time and place because Mom took a picture of the walk my older brothers had shoveled through the three foot snowfall before church that day and she finished the roll of film with a photo of toddler me dawdling and gaping at the first snow I had ever seen.

I just checked. Yes! I did turn the coffee maker off.

 

[SLY22]

Bladder surgery when I was 4 years old, being in the hospital a few days and screaming bloody murder when I went to the bathroom the first time.

 

[BeerThirty]

I have a terrible memory, actually. But the first memories I have take me back to probably 4 or 5 years old, and they are extremely faint at that.

 

[Mauser]

Somewhere around two,that’s when my parents divorced. I can distinctly remember the last thing my dad did and momma got us out of that situation.

 

[WOODIE13]

Camping and fishing @ 2.5 on the New River @ Glade creek with my family, remember my Papaw, Dad and uncles dragging the boat over the hill

 

[Jim Baker]

Eating hamburgers and drinking co-cola in my Granny and Pappy's restaurant, the Dixieland Cafe on US 41 in Lenox Ga. I was 3 1/2 or so.

 

[cracker4112]

I don’t think I can remember anything prior to about 3 years old.

 

[LTZ25]

I forgot .