What's Your Earliest Memory?

[CO Liberal]

This is an offshoot from the "Born Before 1986" thread. Think back to the first thing you remember happening.

For me, I remember a summer day when I was three years old. I was playing with my older sister and some neighbor kids on the lawn next to my parent's house. Since I was born in November of 1952, that would put this somewhere in the Summer of 1956.

[amber dog democrat]

1. steam locomotives on the FT Worth and Denver RR

picking up tank cars on a siding near the Henrietta Depot... but also making my way accross a cattle guard, and being nuzzled by a horse when i was 2.

[Tesibria]

2. sitting on the floor

Under the dining room table ... the floor was this black and white spotted stuff, and I was hanging onto the silver/metal table legs, watching our big German Shepherd dog in the doorway.

Per mom and dad - we moved from the house with that floor when I was 16 months old.

[tsakshaug]

3. in my playpen

with my busybox. I had a story in my head that went with all the buttons and sliders. My mother remembers me going through specific patterns with that toy. She claims I was about 18 months when I was doing that.
Remember Chrismas when I was almost 3. Got a silver piggy bank, lost the screw on the kitchen floor. The floor is the key, they changed from red to white during the summer when I was 3. I remember looking for the screw on a red floor

[greyfox]

4. Army doll

I must have been all of a year old...maybe younger... and I recall watchiing out the window of our trailer (yeah, we were military and moved around a lot) and seeing my army doll in the rain getting ruined... back in those days the heads were made of plaster of paris or whatever... and it would "melt" as in crinkle and fall apart. And me, a boy baby! Haha. Oh well. You asked.

[flamingyouth]

5. Riding in my mom's pink 1962 Ford Ranchero

I don't remember how old I was. I think we were going up to the Safeway on Crown Hill.

[CO Liberal]

6. One '62 Ranchero .... Coming UP!!!

Source: http://www.falconman.com/

[flamingyouth]

8. Ours was the open-bed kind

It was really rusty, and I preferred "gray car" (my dad's 1966 Chrysler Newport), but my mom needed a car, so they bought the pink and white Ranchero.

Thanks - wow, that takes me back! :D

[VelmaD]

7. Horseback riding with my dad when I was about 2 and...

"helping" my momma shell peas at about the same age.

[Branjor]

10. In my crib.....

wanting out! I was out on my first birthday. I was born in November of 1952 too.

[RandomKoolzip]

9. Steely Dan, "Do it Again," The smell of pot smoke, feeling good,

standing on my parents's couch, laughing....

My mom and dad were hippies.

[dr.strangelove]

11. I remember . . .

The first presidential election I remember is Ford - Carter and the jokes about Ford falling all the time. I don't remember any elections before that. My earliest memoy in going to the hospital with my mom in 1976 when I had a tumor removed from my back and lung.

I remember the NYC blackout and the "Summer of Sam." I remember Reggie's Mr. October moment and the Iran hostages.

So I remember bits and piees of the mid-70s, but mostly the late 70s.

I try to forget the 80s, but no such luck.

[ze_dscherman]

12. Going to a photographer

My parents had moved to a little town, so we went to a professionla photographers to get some pictures for the grandparents. Very exicting. I posed with my baby sister. I must have been a bit around three.

[miss_kitty]

13. I remember wondering what 'upside-down' would look like, so I

bent myself in two over the crib railing and have a memory of things rushing past upside-down, then be outside my crib, crying.

I asked my mom and she said it happened when I was 9 months old. Fall of '54. Gawd I'm OLD. And I remember everything, apparently :eyes:

My first voting memory was going with mom when she threw the lever for Kennedy...

[skygazer]

23. That's funny

I threw myself down the stairs once when I was around 3 or 4. My mom was always warning me not to fall down the stairs and I got to wondering why. What was so bad about it? So I went to the top and deliberately fell. Wow! She was right! It sucked!

[johnnie]

14. Sitting on the floor with the family

Sitting around with my father's reel to reel making a tape to send to my uncle in Viet Nam. I was turning 4 the next month (Aug 68), so I was 3. We still have a copy of the tape around, but I can't find it. I was going to put it on CD. My sister was not yet born and my little brother was just a baby.
That's the earliest full memory. I have flashes of other things, but I can't fill it all in.

[Robroy]

15. I don't remember.

n/t

[FunBobbyMucha]

16. Circa 1968 or so,

I remember our house in Columbus Ohio (Frazier Road East, to be exact).

Caskets on television.

Mom playing the Beatles (Eleanor Rigby).

Falling down the basement stairs, the sting of Bactine.

Christmas, a stuffed frog I named Freddy.

A new potato chip called a Pringle. Dad in an undershirt.

My tonsillectomy.

My Krazy Kart, which was five times cooler than a Big Wheel. A huge plastic Batman mask that teetered on my little head, creating the effect of a bobble head. Getting Pete Rose's autograph, and him not smiling.

Thanks. Now I wanna cry.

[djeseru]

17. Seeing a rainbow...

...out in the parking lot of some apartments on Lancaster in Fort Worth. The puddles and wet cars as well. My parents had just divorced, so that puts me at around 2, circa 1970. I can remember eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and oatmeal most of the time afterward.

I remember a dream from around that time as well, seeing the new freeway lights that had just been put in near Camp Bowie Blvd. - walking on the side of the road, at night and it started snowing.

[Kelli372]

18. I was 13 months old...

I was having eye surgery. I remember being in a huge metal-railed crib in a room with a bunch of other cribs. It was dark in the room, and I remember seeing light coming in through the doorway as a nurse came into the room.

[Ronnie]

19. I was about two.

My father ran over my doll buggy. My mother started screaming at him, "You could have killed her." I remember thinking...Poor Daddy. What can I say? I was, and still am, Daddy's girl.

[LisaM]

20. Between one and two... I got my stomach pumped

from eating Zud. I remember being in the hospital and seeing my father and nuns peering into what seems like an enormous crib. Also, I remember various stuff arriving for my sister before she was born (another crib, toybox, etc.) and she is two years and three months younger than I. Best, I remember both my grandmothers coming once to visit me. My father's mother died when I was two, and that is the only memory I have of her, and it's pretty misty, but at least I have it, unlike all of her other grandchildren.

[skygazer]

21. Summer of 1964

I was three years old. Standing on the porch of our house. I had left my tricycle in the driveway, against my mother's express instructions, and the farmer who shared our drive backed over it with the hay truck.

I vividly remember my brother coming up the steps to the porch holding out the twisted wreckage of the handlebars like a trophy towards me. :cry:

It was extremely traumatic. My tricycle was my prize possession (so I shouldn't have left it in the damn driveway like an idiot) and we were very poor so there was no chance of a replacement.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. Standing at the dining room window

watching a train go by on the tracks behind our house.

We moved out of that house when I was about two years old.

My first coherent memories date from the Christmas season when I was three: going to get my picture taken with Santa Claus, singing Silent Night at a Christmas party, and getting a doll with a doll buggy.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

24. Standing in the corner, being punished.

The next memory I have is of my mom and grandma talking at the table about going to see a house for sale.