Your first memory

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What's the first thing you remember in your life?

this is such a good question/idea.

i have one of babyhood that doesn't make much sense...
so i will go to the next earliest one, of me in a highchair. these are two separate ones but chronologically close.
i really loved bacon and i remember sitting in my highchair, so far away from the table, and the adults at the table say to me 'stop smacking your bacon'.

i was sitting in the highchair again and my grandma puts my plate on my tray. i see that it has ketchup on it. i DID NOT WANT ketchup. so i flip the plate upside down onto the floor, which earned me a harsh reprimand. i was so pleased when the plate hit the floor ketchup-side-down, too.

I have a lot of memories from 2 years on, but from infancy, I'm not sure. It's hard to tell really, since when I was very young I wasn't aware of my age or how young I actually was.

I remember having the whooping cough as a two-year-old. My Mom was helping me sit up in bed as I was coughing. I guess she was worried I might choke if I stayed lying down.

I also remember my problems learning to speak at about the same age. Already then I was a perfectionist and got really mad when I made mistakes. I remember standing in the middle of the dining-room, looking through the open doors into the living-room (deliberately not looking at my Mom), struggling to get the words out, my Mom bending over me, suggesting words, guessing at what I was trying to say instead of just letting me say it in my own time. I hated that. According to my Mom, my first whole sentence was "I can do it myself" (in Danish of course).

You guys aren't going to believe this but my first memory is actually of watching The Transformers when I was stil living at my mom's old house in Amsterdam at the age of 2 years old.

My mum guiding my hand writing my name on pieces of paper when I was one and a half.

With my mother at an amusement park.

I'm sitting on the kitchen floor, playing with something, toy cars maybe. My mother is cooking. Outside, a real car goes by. I can remember thinking "What's that sound?" – not with these words, I was too young to know there are such things as words. This is not much by itself, actually it's trivial, but it's my first memory from a time when I couldn't even speak.

Sometimes I don't tell anyone this, because most often, people (including doctors) think I'm imagining it. But I'm not, and I've proven it by remembering thing that went on when my family was not present, and were confirmed by others who were present but with whom I've never been in contact since infancy.

I remember being in an incubator at the hospital when I was born 1 month late, and had to stay there for 21 days. I also remember things like neighbor's license plate numbers from when I was 2 or 3 years old, and I remember verbatim conversations which took place among family members before I was old enough to know what the words meant. Fact.

BUT: I can't remember what color my pants are this morning, unless I look, and I can't remember anyone's name 5 seconds after being introduced


Charles

I think my earliest memory was being in a hospital to get my tonsils taken out, though I don't know whether it was before or after.

I remember being in a car, and hearing the word "hospital" which meant nothing to me at the time.

I have a few memories that are hard to order chronologically.

I remember playing with the railing at the bottom of the stairs holding onto the pole and swinging around it. I asked my father how old I was at this time. I think he said 2. This memory is at the very least distorted and at the most completely false and made up. The reason I say this is because I remember I was wearing relatively bright coloured clothes that looked girly. I'm a transwoman so at the age of 2 I wouldn't have been wearing clothing meant for girls. My parents would've only given me clothing meant for 2 year old boys.


I also remember asking dad if I was smart. When he said yes I replied, "smarter than you?". This was probably a little bit later than the first memory but around the same time.


I remember putting my ear to the kitchen floor and listening to the humming noise I could hear. I was curious about the noise and wondered why I could hear it when I put my ear to the floor.


Those flashes all compete for my earliest memories. I don't have any special memories from before I was 2 and according to my mother I was expressing complete thoughts in words by the age of 1. She says the phrase I used most often at the age of 1 was "don't run birdie, you'll fall down". I wish I could remember that one. I can not remember a time in which I couldn't speak.

My first full memory is from when I was still living with Mum in the East End of London, so I was less than 18 months old.
I cold see a man walk by outside in the fog and I asked Mother, "is that Daddy"?, she said "no".
Shame really as thats the only childhood memory of my real Father and it wasnt even him.

I have an earlier memory as a baby but its quite vague, being licked on the face by our Boxer dog and not liking it.

Why wouldn't I believe you, I remember me being carried above a baby crib, which can be only the time when I was born - one single "memory picture", frozen in time. But I'm not sure if that's for real. I'm sure though that the next one from my babyhood is real: I'm on the train with my mom and she's showing me throughout the window one of the statues of Warsaw city.

My great grandfather's funeral. I might have been two.

My earliest memory would be my 3rd birthday party. I went to some sort of big play area and remember opting to go play on my own other than stick with the other kids.