Essay: What was your first memory?

My memory started at age 5. The first thing i remember was all my friends crushing and drowning the 3 faced 'evie' doll i got from my grandmother. My reaction was to lie on the tracks while a train was coming, and they all had to drag me off.

"There was a bright light... and then someone hit me!?"

I have never had a continual memory.

My earliest memory is my father teaching me how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when I was about three. I'm not completely sure what you mean by a continual memory but I don't think I have it yet. I seem to forget most mundane events within minutes.

Can anyone here besides me answer questions like how many drinking faucets were there in the second grade, what were the shelf locations of all the library books you read when you were 8, Could you recreate most of the drawings and sketches and poetry you made in grade school? Account numbers you encounter when cleaning databases? The floor plan or site plan of every building you've ever been in or trail you've ever hiked? I've been told i have eidetic memory, but i don't have any idea what the average person remembers. All i know is they usually can't remember our shared experiences, conversations etc.

While I'm asking, does any one know a good career besides inventory control, cryptography, or librarian science that uses that kind of memory? the more artistic the better.

I think two or three. I have memories of my mother telling me fairy tales like Aladdin and his genie lamp and Ali Babba and the 40 thieves while my sister and I ate jook for lunch at our toddler's table. All in Chinese, of course. I have memories of my great-grandmother taking a break from walking in Chinatown at a tiny apartment room we used to rent over the Shanghai import store on Broadway. I can remember lots of my grandparents' friends who came over from Hawaii and so forth who would bring us red dyed coconut candies. I have lots of memories.

I remember waking up from a dream I had concerning Kirk and Spock...for some reason, Spock scared the heck out of me in the dream. I was about 5 years old.
However, I can not recall random, particular details of my life before the age of 7.

I have blocked out a lot of memories from my childhood. I do however remember holding my mother's hand through the bars of my crib as an infant.

twisty: that's pretty neat.
I do remember a few 'snapshot' memories from before 5. Jumping up & down on the bed with lots of Viewmasters. Climbing the 3 accordian gates into the kitchen to pour a bowl of sugar to eat in front of the mechanically remote controlled TV, playing with the neighbor girl's buzzing bee pen & spirographs, & the 'squirt' bottle vending machine at my dad's VW campervan customization shop. I can relate all my life interests to the first toys i had: 3d stuff, an erector set, the pixel screen, etch a sketch, various transparent mechanical things which i would break for making new contraptions out of. I was taught basic electric theory when i was 5. My point is parents should be real careful about what toys they choose for their kids.

can't remember!!lol lol

glad you liked it.

no idea

I was probably about 8 when I started to have continual memory. My first memory is from when I was around 6-7, though. I was in the car of a friend of my parents' and Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World" was on the radio.

2 when my family moved into a new house. I remember our first day but have no memories of our old apartment.

Same here Doom. I remember my dad and granddad fixing up my sister's and my bed frames in our old room, but I can't remember ever being in our old house.

I'm not sure what is meant here by "continual memory". I have "snapshots" starting from around age 3, and "scenes" from maybe age 5. Earliest snapshot is of a swing my dad made that had 4 rails made of large dowel hung on supports of metal rod, painted bright colors. Earliest scene is probably the Easter morning (I think) that my brother fell out of a tree and I had to run get my parents to take him to the hospital. Or possibly the time I was in the hospital when I was 5. [post reading comments:] After that they get thicker pretty quickly, but I wouldn't describe any of them as continuous. I get the impression that most or all of my life experience is there, but little of it is accessible to my conscious mind. Evidence for this is that every now and again, snippets that I thought were totally lost are triggered and are sharp and clear as yesterday.

i've considered it for a bit and it seems that my first memory is a 3yr-old me posing for my mother's camera in front of my father's Cobra in our "new" driveway.

Continual? I don't remember the events of the past week... My best earliest memory is when I was 3.5 years old and my little brother was born at home on accident.. I was taken to the neighbor's house and wasn't told what was wrong with my mommy. It was my first traumatic experience. ;)

Jasmine: I can remember all of those things too (drinking fountains, numbers, floorplans, trails, etc.)

ok, i'd write survey to find out, but i don't know enough about people to know the base line.

I drank so much as a baby and I had so many black outs that it's really hard to say.

I first became aware of myself in 1974. I remember scenes from before then, all the way back to kindergarten (including ending up at the high school my first day because I got on the wrong bus), but I never knew what year it was or where I lived or.. oh, thats not true. I knew where I lived in kindergarten. I just forgot that I had known (I remember telling the bus driver where I lived so she could take me home because - surprise surprise - I got on the wrong bus to go home, too).


I think that I started remembering things that first day of school because prior to that point my life consisted of eating and sleeping and playing in no particular order. After I entered school, I started encountering new people and doing new things on a regular basis. I started changing over time so my memories become distinct from one another.

I also have lots of memories from before I started school that I later found out aren't real memories; I remember the events not as they happened but as my parents liked to tell them.

or from photographs...I have a memory and then realize I am replaying a scene from family photos.

bill: LOL
Twister - I've done that quite a bit, too.

me too. and even back in kiddiegarden i constantly missed the bus.

I can remember lying in my crib (I don't know how old I was) and squinting to see things turn fuzzy. The next memory is when I was 2ish and Mom was chasing me and I turned to see how far behind me she was and I ran into a wall(oops).

I remember the first year when I knew what year it was - 1973. I was 5-6 and I must have started groking years. I have memories that are probably earlier than that, but I have no date-stamp for them so I don't really know when they were.

bill: i was very annoyed when it stopped being 1974 and started being 1975, because it had always been 'nineteen-seventy-four' and 'nineteen-seventy-five' just didn't have the same ring to it. And '76 was even worse - they elected a new president! I couldn't imagine the president being someone other than Ford! My father drove a Ford!

I came to America in 1974. I thought Gerald Ford was the president pictured on the dime
Now I realize, the only place he'll ever actually be pictured is on America's Funniest Home Videos.

He passed more womens rights stuff than any other president.

I really couldn't say what my first memory was, but I don't seem to remember anything from before the age of two. (We moved to a different house when I was two, and I don't remember the old house at all or anything that happened there.)

I really couldn't say what my first memory was, but i don't seem to remember anything from before the age of two. Just heard my neighbor say 'ee aye ee aye ooh' that was probably it.

I was three and a half when my sister was born, and I distinctly remember going to see her in the hospital, not being able to tell which bassinet was hers, and being frustrated at not being able to communicate this. I have a few other memories which must be from about that time, and I remember, at the age of five, going to a place I hadn't been to since my third birthday and being familiar with it (although I no longer remember the place itself, only that I was familiar with it at age five).

Just to cut down on the number of comments, everyone can imagine i'm saying 'hey, that's cool' unless i indicate otherwise.

I think my first memory is lying on the floor in kindergarten reading the Little Golden Book version of Rumplestiltskin.

phi: I remember having the same feeling when my brother was born... the ambulance had backed down our street and my grandpa picked my older sister up so she could see where mommy was going, and he never showed me... I had that same frustration you had... It's one of the only really clear memories I have of my grandpa.

Sitting on a wooden chair in a room cast in blue light. The fact that there is a photograph of the scene helped me to retain the memory. I was two.

this was done a century ago and is making me nostalgic

One of my birthdays, but I don't know which. May be my 4th.

standing up

Crawling through the doggie door and sitting on the driveway.

LOL

I don't really remember. The oldest memory I can come up with was when I probably about six or seven. My mother was giving my cousin a little cabinet that I had had for as long as I could remember. I was very sad. I also remember being about the same age and my sister breaking her arm. My father laid in bed with me while she was in the hospital and telling me to pray for her. She was very young (about 3) and they weren't sure if it heal to the point where she could use it again. We had never been religious in my family and I wasn't quite sure how to pray.

Oh!!! I just thought of an earlier one!!! My sister was maybe 2 and I was about 4 and she had gotten the tip of her finger cut off with a door. We were at my aunt and uncle's house and it was dark and I felt bad because my mother, father, and uncle had taken her to the hospital. I felt bad because I wasn't crying and my aunt was.

I remember sitting in my high chair and throwing cereal on the floor because I didn't want to eat it. I don't know what age I was.