My first memories were of what our family called "The little yellow house". It was a tiny cottage on the road following the river.

I was around two when we moved from there, and I'm not sure of the sequence of these memories, but always considered my first memory was standing on our front porch, and looking at the hills across the river, ablaze in their autumn glory.

I can remember the kitchen, and the Aunt Jemima Cookie jar on top of the refrigerator, and I remember looking down our basement steps at my Daddy, working in his darkroom down there. He dug the basement out by hand. I remember we had some sort of little bulldog, I remember what my bedroom looked like and the policeman standing at our door, and being frightened. He came to buy our house.

I was 2 years and 1 month when my parents got me up very early to go to my grandparents. My mother was about to birth my sister. I don't remember anything other than the fact that it was dark outside. I didn't know that people got up when it was dark. My next memory was when I was 4 and had appendicitis. I remember all those details.

I'll really have to think about this; I'm not sure what I'd consider my earliest memory--definitely not at two or three like Marda, Suzi, and Kris.

I do remember at four or five being bitten by a neighbor's Pekinese--who they said never bit anybody! The neighbors took me to the ER for stitches. They were Italian and on the way talked to each other in Italian. I was sure they were talking about me! And they probably were!

When I saw the title I knew my answer. What surprised me was reading your memory, Mwoods, as mine has similarities.

I was also three years old. Mom was in the kitchen. I was in the living room, and so was my tricycle. I tried to ride it around the room and I fell off sideways, against the wall and slid down behind the radiator.

The radiator was on, super hot, and I hollered for mommy. That is all I remember, but am told a trip to the hospital and bandages followed, and that the blisters healed nicely.

I don't have one definitive "first" memory. I have memories from when I was around three or four. I remember my dad attached a spare bicycle seat on to the crossbar of his bike and he used to take me on rides out into the country to gather dandelions as food for our rabbits (we kept them during World War II). I remember before that going next door to see Mrs. Johnson. She always gave me an apple, so that had to be pre-war or not long after it began(and I was three when war came). And I remember all of us sitting in the space under the stairs during air raid warnings ~ often in the middle of the night. That was before we moved to the Midlands where we played on bomb sites, so I would have been three or four. I have a lot of happy memories.

I have a lot of bits and pieces of scenes that I saw when I was about three. No particular happening, just scenes of places. The earliest that I am sure of, is waking up in my crib and pulling up by with the bars. I don't remember ever being PUT in the crib or lying in it, just waking up and pulling up.

My earliest frightning experience was possibly when I was about three. My grandfather was said "to have lost his mind." He had, without doubt, some sort of dementia. He was very frightning to a small child, both in looks and actions. My mother tried her best to get me to sit in his lap and kiss him. I remember screaming and trying to get away.

they say that most people's earliest memories are about 3 or 4 years old..mine was 3..easter sunday...i was just let out of my body cast and was given a cloth easter rabbit toy and we (sisters) had our photograph taken..they had to hold me up ..standing..as i was still very unsteady just getting out of the body cast..

Arriving in Hawaii. I remember what I was wearing and the sand. I don't remember the trip there (just days before). Too bad since it was a cruise.

All right ronbre, that's just too much for me to ignore. Body cast?

My earliest memory is of my oldest brother explaining the mysteries of the written word. Long before I was three because at the time bro3 was born, I was fluently reading 2nd bro's school books and he's almost 8 years older.

A similar memory is about the same time because I was with mum, visiting someone who had a flagstone sidewalk (vividly recall the cool stones) and whoever it was condescendingly asked why I was carrying a copy of "The Little Train that Could", and I answered, "So that I can read it," and promptly sat down on the flagstones and begain reading it out loud. It apparently caused quite a stir because I remember several adults debating the wisdom of "permitting" someone so young to read. That's probably also when I began to realize that not all adults had good sense.

Yep, that's how it used to be done. There is nothing wrong with providing access to learning to a child who is capable and wants to learn. There was a big hubbub about permitting children with accelerated skills to attend classes with children out of their age group, for many years. I suspect it was believed it would make them social misfits. I find kids this bright usually gravitate toward older children anyway, and are more comfortable and socially appropriate in their company.

I pestered my older sister to share with me what she was taught everyday at school. By the time I got there, I wasn't fluent in writing, but I could read and spell well enough to warn my classmates we were getting shots, when the school nurse showed up. She didn't want us to know what was coming down, so she just told our teacher S-H-O-T-S. There was a minor rebellion, but how could the teacher be mad? LOL.

You and I must be close to the same age, mwoods. My first memory (the only one that I truly believe is MY memory and not a memory of a story told later) was about the same time. My two older brothers and I were standing in the kitchen next to the kitchen table. My oldest brother as "making margerine" by kneeding the red dot into the bag of, was that lard? I remember looking up at the table and seeing the chunky legs and the apron connecting the legs. It was a typical farm kitchen table that people love to find and use in their homes today. We moved there when I was a year old so I could have been anywhere from 1 1/2 to 3ish. It was while there was still rationing as the stories told about that time included mother trading sugar and leather stamps for gas and other things she needed. She could get sugar and shoes in Mexico which was about 50 miles or so away. There were also stories of my brothers taking me to school with them every day and if they didn't show up with me, the teacher would send one of them home to get me. I started school knowing how to read and remember coming home from first day of school and reading the whole Dick & Jane to my mother while she ironed at the foot of the bed.

May I add my first real memory? I was very seriously ill when I was about 18 months old or a little older maybe closer to 3. I had a beautiful quilt on my crib. It was "Grandmothers Garden" pattern in minature and truely beautiful being accented with a lovely bright blue border.(my favorite color ever since) I still have that very quilt that was hand stitched by my Mother. A lovely memory of her.

I love that quilt pattern and have one here that my husband's great grandmother made. Maybe the being sick and then the comfort from that quilt is what made you remember it.Plus..there are so many colors in it and it's definitely a cheerful quilt.

My first memory was the summer after I turned 2 in April.
When we were discussing this subject years later, I had trouble convincing my parents that I really did remember the event.
After I told them detail after detail, they shook their heads in amazement.

My Mom was pregnant with my sister and my parents went to look at a house they bought.
(My Dad still lives there 54 years later.)
I remember the street wasn't paved, the white house with black shutters and my parents each holding one of my hands as we walked down the driveway.

I think my earliest memory is of badly burning my hand - we had a coal fire, and my mother had removed the fireguard from the hearth to top up the coals, and poked them around with the poker. She turned to replace the fireguard, and I made a grab for the still-burning-hot poker on the hearth. Burned my hand pretty badly, and I screamed and so did my mother. I also remember my mother had taken the lace curtains down to wash them, because the quality of light in the room was different without them.

Did she stretch the curtains on nail frames to dry? I remember my Mama doing my g'mother's lace curtains on what she called curtain stretchers. They were wicked, and she'd pluck her fingers on them.

My mother used those for years and I always stuck my fingers helping her. I finally got the knack of it. The problem though was that she had them out in the yard sometimes, and if the wind changed direction,the soot from the steel mills of Pittsburg would turn them gray and she'd have to wash them all over again.

Yup, those "curtain stretchers" were "finger killers" of the first degree ! I'd have to help stretch those lace curtains whether I wanted to or not. Especially in the spring after having the wood stove soot them up during the winter. The stretchers and quit frames were still in my Dad's garage years later.

Mama always did them outside too. I used to haunt the estate auctions, it was a passion. And you know, curtain stretchers were one thing I never saw again after those early years when Mama did G'mas. Speaking of lace curtains, I brought a lot of lace panels back with me from England, the last time I went and most of the upstairs have them across the bottom panes, and this last week, I have hand washed all of them.

What Marda said reminded me, that the water off mine was black. It was coal dust. Once you've lived in a house with a coal fired heat source, you can't mistake it. It is prolly in all the cracks and crevices of my windows from years of coal heat, although we had the coal furnace taken out when I move in. There was a coal bank on our property and the man who owned this farm used to mine it and sell it and that means he also used it. It was a lot easier than felling trees for the fireplaces.

I don't know exactly how old I was, but it was definitely age 3 or less, because that's how old I was when we moved to the house my mother's still in now, and this happened in the 3-unit apartment we lived in before the move.

My younger brother and I were sitting and playing in the dirt at the side of the place and suddenly realized that the dirt we had all over us was moving and hurting. We had disturbed some ants' nests and they were letting us know they were not happy with the situation. Boy, did we wail! Mom and Dad must have thought someone broke a leg.

Until I remembered that, the first thing I thought of was being in the "new house" for just a few months with my brother on the couch very ill, and the doctor standing over him telling my parents he needed to go to the hospital immediately. Dad's mom came to stay with us and watch me so my parents could spend most of the next 3 weeks in the hospital with my brother who nearly died of bacterial meningitis.

Summer of 52, Beverly 4 on my left and Marilyn 6 on my right in our back yard, I was 2 that march. The bench around the tree was taken down the next spring since the wood was rotting. Always did like that bench and have wanted to make one some place. Another project to think about.

Yes I remember the trees, the bench, the truck, and the car and even stuff before this picture. I am blessed/doomed with a good memory of many things going way back that has not yet faded.

{{gwi:193057}}

It's hard to pick out which one is THE earliest, but most of the early ones revolve around my maternal grandmother. She died when I was three, and I very much remember her being ill. But before that, I remember her taking me for walks when I was not yet walking well (so maybe I was 2?). I'd usually end up skinning a knee. She would then take me to the bathroom and take a cotton ball from a square jar with an off-white lid, soak it with alcohol and swab my knee. It hurt, thus I remember.

I also have some vague early memories of a televised funeral (remaining image: priest swinging incense) that may or may not have been for a Kennedy. My mother said she made me watch the JFK funeral and told me to remember it. Maybe I do. Maybe I don't. I would have been 19 months old.

I remember a hospitalization that probably happened slightly before I was three (oxygen tent, pudding), I remember getting stitches on my third birthday, and I remember kissing a bee.

I have so many memories but not sure which was my First. But I also had a Sparkle Plenty doll. I almost forgot about her.

Most of my First memories are from the farm that we all lived on till I was about six, then we moved to the city.

We were my mother & father, my grandmother & grandfather my mothers parents, and my mothers brother & wife catherina.
My uncle's name was John but I guess I couldn't say uncle so all my life he was Unkie to me, even now. Unkie lived in the summer house and the rest of us lived in the main house
My grandfather owned the farm.

I remember one night that the men in the house had to go to the field because there was a fox that was killing the chickens. And I guess stealing the eggs. But they always told me that I throw the eggs over the wall in the field.

The only ones living yet would be my Unkie and aunt Catherina who are in there 80's now and live in Florida. I am still very close to them. Love them so much.