My grandmother dying and everyone being so upset...I was about three years old....sixty seven years ago.

When I was 3 yrs and 2 months old I had eye surgery (nothing major) and I remember that vividly. Driving to the hospital in another city with Dad (Mom had just had a baby, my younger brother, and didn't come). My older sister loaned me her nurse doll for the trip (I was never allowed to play with her dolls, LOL) Going to a store before and buying a toy giraffe for my baby brother, going to the hospital and being on the operating table with bright lights above me. Waking up afterwards and asking for orange juice.

I was two and a half when it was time for my brother to start kindergarten. He didn't want to go and I remember our Mom trying to talk him into it. When we got to school he pitched a fit and wouldn't get out of the car. I pitched a fit because Mom wouldn't let me out to go play with all the other kids. (We lived out on a farm and rarely had any neighbor kids to play with.) It's a perfect example of our different personalities.

Ron

I can remeber before kindergarden,me & my little sister,shes about 4 years younger so if I was 5 how old she was.My mother worked I guess they couldnt afford a sitter,so mother slept all day because she worked nights,no one to watch us,feed us...I remember one time we were hungry we took money out of her purse ,walked down 1 block accross 2 busy streets to pretzel factory and back home,she didnt even know we left.

Guess my earliest memory goes back to when I was about 4 weeks old--not a specific memory, more of a cellular one. Because that's when I met my husband. When we were reintroduced at age 17, we both had a very, very strong reaction--I had a feeling of 'coming home', that I'd known him all my life. He felt an instant bond with me as well. Interesting how experiences so early in our lives can make such an impression on us, isn't it.

As far as conscious memories? I can remember playing in the backyard, getting cupcakes from my next door neighbor, visiting my grandmother (she died when I was about 2.5) I'm not sure which is the very earliest memory--they're mostly so generic, that they may have been in any order.

My Mother say there is no way I remember this...
When I was just 2 years old, my father took me with him on a trip from Lake City FL, to his hometown in the very southwestern part of PA. I do not remember any of that long trip other than when we got to PA they were having snow storm (I imagine it must have been my first experience with snow) We came upon 2 ederly ladies that had gotten their car stuck on the edge of a very steep bank. The roads were very rural and narrow.
With strict instuctions to stay in the car, Dad got out to help them.
We must have been slipping and sliding quite a bit because I still can feel the very real fright in thinking that he was going roll that car over the embankment.
I assume everything worked out...that's all I remember and he doesn't remember the event at all! This would have been about 1969.

My earliest memory:

3 weeks before I turned 3 when Mom & Dad left us @ Grandma's while they went to the hospital for her to have a baby. I pitched a fit & squalled when she walked out the door. I do not even remember when she came back with a cute little red haired baby boy. Only the trauma of Mama leaving me (despite the fact that I ADORED my grandparents!).

I remember when I was about 2 1/2 and my mom's brother's family from California were visiting us in Nebraska. I remember them laying my next younger sister (about 1 year at the time) and my cousin of about the same age in a crib together for a nap. I also remember my mom sitting in the rocking chair and me running across the room at about the same age but don't know if it was at the same time as the babies in the crib or not. After that, my next real memory is climbing in bed with my older sisters on the morning of my fifth birthday.

I have 3 memories from the time I was between 3 1/2 and 4 1/2. One of the memories was having a piece of rebar stuck in my knee. I remember waiting while I sent my brother back to get my mom. He is 11 months younger than me... I can't imagine why my Mom would have let us play in a construction area at that age.

The real first memory I had at that place I won't share... but it is as vivid as yesterday.

I remember my mom giving me a choice of which toys I wanted to keep when we moved. I had just turned 2.

I have a vivid memory of staring at the bedroom doorway from my crib (which was in my parent's room) waiting for someone to come get me (was I crying?) I don't know how old I was. Old enough to stand since there are no crib slats in my view. I have no idea why that has stuck with me for 40 years. How long did they leave me there LOL?

I must have been about 3-4 years old, and I remember sitting in church (Catholic church) and hearing the priest talk about how exciting it was that John F. Kennedy - a Catholic just like us! - had been elected president.

I was around 2 and a half. I remember waking up in my crib in my parents' room and having both a blanket and a chenille bedspread pulled over me. I also remember when I got my own bedroom. I remember the men delivering my bedroom furniture. I looked at myself in the dresser mirror and was very happy,. The walls of my room were painted pink and blue.

Some early memories are real, some remembered because the family repeated them often.

This one I definitely remember. I was 3-4 years old, and a relative had died. My parents went to the funeral and left me with friends. I knew this family and we had all been there to visit many times. This time though I had to stay overnight. I remember being put to bed and I was terrified being there alone! I guess I slept; I do remember my parents coming to get me, early in the morning. Joy, Joy!

I was 4-5 years old and my DF was building us a new house across from our house. I would go over there and play with the pieces of scrap lumbar, and pick up the shavings which curled as they fell from the hand plane he used. I pinned them in my hair. My, I was so pretty!

I don't remember this but when I was 2-3 I loved doing the little Ring around the Roses game. "Ring around the roses, pocket full of posies. 1,2,3 and we all squat down." Except I always said scot down. My DM thought that was just too cute and told it over and over to anyone who was around.

Sue

When I was young, twin boys lived across the street from me. I remember playing with them many many times the summer before I turned five in September. They each had a tricycle and I didn't have one. Two months after I turned five one of the twins was ran over by a truck and killed. He was three years old. I don't remember playing with only one after that. That's strange now that I think about it.

I remember being in kindergarten and playing at recess and I was wearing a dress that my grandmother had made me, it had a little turtle on the front of it and I was wearing red stockings. I was having too much fun playing and didn't want to stop to go to the bathroom and I wet my pants. When my mom came to get me I was crying and told her and I remember her telling that you couldn't even notice because of my stockings and I remember telling her I wasn't upset over that I was upset because I had puddles in my shoes!

I must have been 5 because my sister was 3. It was Thanksgiving and Mom had been preparing the dinner.The pumpkin pie was where sister could reach it, and she put in her thumb and ate all of the pumpkin. To this day she still loves pumpkin. Her birthday was Monday and I made her pumpkin pudding and a pumpkin pie.

azzalea -- I have some sort of visceral memory too. I had pyloric stenosis as an infant and had surgery. I came away from that surgery with a lifelong aversion to being confined so that I cannot MOVE. (I also have a huge scar down my middle.)

I've been told that anesthesia for infants was so uncertain in the early 1940's that they often gave babies a little whiskey with sugar to suck on rather than risk giving too much ether. I may associate being held down with the pain of surgery.

One of my earliest true memories goes back to when I was about four. It was late afternoon or early evening. My parents were standing in our dining room, arguing. The chandelier was on. My father wanted my mother to agree to a divorce and to sell our house. She stood up to him, but she began to cry. I was standng in the arch between the living and dining rooms. I was furious with my father. I stamped my foot and shouted "Don't you DARE make my mommy cry!" I don't remember what happened next. I suppose my father left and went back to his club. I have a lot of sad memories of those years; my parents' divorce wasn't final until I was six.

I also remember going to sleep in a bedroom in an apartment on Delaware Place in Chicago. The Palmolive beacon swept over my window.

Don't remember exactly how old I was, but I was still sleeping in a babybed. I remember being put to bed and when I wasn't really sleepy yet, I would lie in the dark and use one hand to tickle the palm of my other hand.

I was weird then and I'm still weird! LOL

These are interesting! Some sweet and some tragic.
My mom doesn't believe my earliest memory. She has a painted tin tray that was paint by number. I remember wanting to paint so badly and reaching for it (I must have been crawling). She put me in the crib. I bawled. When I saw the tray years later I told her I remembered her painting those birds. She looked the back and I would have been about 7 months old. I still get the urge to paint - only I can now.

I had a problem with my eyes and needed surgery when I was 3. Both eyes were affected by *lazy eye* to some degree when I was tired out. To fix it, the surgeon had to shorten the muscles behind the eyes (no, I don't know exactly how they do it and don't WANT to know :)). What I remember is that my hospital crib was in the corner of a room, near the door, and there was a small round play table near the door as well. Mom and dad bought some play dishes for me to play with and my grandmother gave me a stuffed dog toy with a wind-up music box in its tummy. The music box is long gone but my 3-year-old son was playing with the puppy yesterday and I still have a few of the dishes. Anyway, I remember that my eyes were bandaged for what seemed a long time and I had splints on my wrists and hands so that I wouldn't be able to remove the bandages at night. I have wonderful eyes now and appreciate what my parents did for me.

It just hit me that all of the earliest memories I have all revolve around cars! I have always had a thing for cars, trucks, planes, helicopters and the like but never got too excited over trains.

Anyway the oldest memory I have is standing on the front seat of my folks '49 Plymouth. Seldom used car seats in those days. And no padded dash to say nothing of plastic collapsible dashboards! What stands out vividly is standing between the folks in the front seat and I can still see the shift lever with the white knob on it. I couldn't have been much more than 18-20 mo. old because once he bought the DeSoto, he soon sold the Plymouth. And I remember when he picked up the DeSoto. I wasn't able to ride along and I was not happy! I was sick or something so Ma wouldn't let me go. I also vividly remember when the guy picked up the Plymouth, watching it drive away. I really liked that old car. And I remember my dad walking over and opening up the garage door and back out that black & white two-toned Firedome. It 'twernt no '49 Plymouth!

Until the day he died my dad insisted there's no way I could possibly remember that. I've described that car in detail to him.

I remember standing at a reinforced glass door of a hospital...with my hands and face pressed against the glass...confused and scared because I was denied entry to the room on the other side of the door. I was not yet three. My younger sister was either dead or dying in that room...from nephrosis. She had been born when I was almost one...and she died before her second birthday. To this day...I can't imagine why my parents left me alone in the area outside her room...but it left me with a lasting impression.

Throughout my life time I've spent more time than I would have liked in hospitals. And...unfortunately...I have an unnatural fear/distrust of them....which I'm sure I can attribute to that early experience.

Anne

Spending nite with grandmother: And her teaching us the Good Nite Prayer

2 years old, having my diaper changed. Mom used "ZBT" brand diaper powder in the blue metal can. The can had drawings of pink toys. Mom used to let me hold the can while being changed.

My dad was killed when I was 3 years and 4 months old. We lived in Texas at the time, and when he died we moved back to Ohio. My oldest memory is going through a drive-thru and giving orders to a clown face. My said that I am remembering the "Jack-in-the-box" drive-thru which we went to all the time in Texas. Unfortunately, I don't have memories of my dad though.

I remember the morning my parents heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor....it was before I was two. I can still picture the radio and my Dad swearing.

Santa Clause scaring the "you know what" out of me at about 3. He asked me to shake hands and I felt that my arms were actually paralyzed and I could not lift them.

A country kid of about 3 seeing the tall buildings of Dallas, Texas through the back glass of father's coupe. My country GM was praying that they would not fall on us and quoting some Bible scripture about the last days.

Someone at church having to add wood to the stove and pump up the gas lanterns as they dimmed, maybe I was 2 years old.

I have a very vivid memory from when i was 3 and also have the scars to prove it!! It was winter and i lived in the country in N.Y. state.My older siblings were going across the hiway to skate on the brook over there and i wanted to watch them from the window.Mom said no,so i went back to playing on the floor.She went upstairs to get ready to go to a meeting,and i pushed this armless blue chair over to the window and stood up on it to see my siblings.

The floors back then were all wood with a rug on top and about 12" of bare floor around the edge of the rug.Well as i stood on the chair,and tried to lean over to rest my arms on the window sill,the chair slipped on the wood floor,and i landed on the very hot radiator.

I let out a blood curdling scream and it seemed my mom was there in seconds,to this day i don't know how she got down the stairs so fast,but she did.My left arm was stuck to the radiator,and she had to pull me off.I have 2 good size scars on that arm to this day.

Isn't it funny how we can remember some things so vividly and yet can't remember what happened 5 minutes ago.
Kathi

I have at least four clear memories from when I was three years old. Two are of having accidents, one is of being in the hospital after surgery and one is of a significant visit from a relative.

My earliest memory is only a small snippet in time. I may have been 4 years old. My dad was in the barn yard trying to start the family car, a Model T Ford. One rear wheel was jacked up and the front wheels chocked. I suppose this was to prevent the car from running over him as he hand cranked the engine. He couldn't be sure if the transmission was in neutral or that it would stay there. I do not recall if he was able to get it running. I know that some time between that event and by the time I was 6 yrs old, that car had been discarded. He sold the engine and transmission to someone who was going to make a stationary power stand and the remaining chassis was dragged into a brushy patch in the pasture below a hill our house sat on. There it lay slowly disappearing with time.

I have a fleeting memory of Christmas visit when my mother took my sister and me to her parents place in Oklahoma, 500 miles from our home. I remember nothing about the trip to and from that place. I remember being tossed back and forth like a ball by my uncles and badly buring both hands. Their kitchen was equipped with a wood burning stove. Granny had cleared the ash box and placed the glowing embers in a metal box. It was at that moment when I ran from the living room into the kitchen, tripped and fell jamming both hands into the ash box and burned both hands. It hurt and I suppose that is why I remembered that incident. Mom was angry with me because she had told me a short time before not to run in the house, and now I was injured.

For the next week, one of my aunts attended to my wounds. My fingers were loosely wrapped in gauze and chicken fat applied to keep the fingers from sticking together. Each day, she cleaned the wounds and re-dressed the fingers. She was very gentle and used a chicken feather to touch my burns because I was so very fearful of anyone touching the burned region - it hurt too much. It must have worked becasue I did not develop any lasting scars.

My reliable memories begin at about age 5.8 yr when I entered first grade at a one-room country school. We had been reduced to travel by horse and buggy for a few years until our economic condition improved. We were unhappy with out lot in life, however, our home life was good and our little family was a very cohesive unit.

I remember getting up on a kitchen chair trying to reach my Vitamin C pills that were delicious! They were orange flavored and I would try daily to reach them in the kitchen pantry. Never could because I was only 2 yrs. old. I remember doing this! When I told my mom about this memory, she was amazed because I was so very little. That was 46 years ago!