Tuesday, March 10, 2009

First memory

I've always been fascinated by early memories.
My first ever memory was when I was 2 years old. My pops and I were on a plane to Florida. Before the plane took off, he got up to use the bathroom. I had no idea that planes had bathrooms! All of a sudden, the plane started moving and I thought my pop was still in the airport and I was going to Florida alone! I screamed and cried and all the passengers and flight attendants had to calm me down. One woman sat next to me and even tried to show me how to knit. How cute is that?

So I would love to know, what is your first memory?

43 comments:

Marissa said...

I lived in Las Vegas until I was five so you would think I would remember something about the neon lights on the strip, but I'm have no recollection of that - just the desert-y expanse across the road from our house (and seeing a magic show). I'm pretty sure my first memory is buying malt balls with my mom at the supermarket. She let me try one before we put them in the bag to see if I liked it...

Cheryl said...

This is an adorable picture. Love that baby cow! :)

Gosh, I can't remember what my first memory is....for some reason I remember "swimming" my barbies in our large fish tank at home. Poor fishies!

Dionne said...

My first memory is the inside of a house in the summer. I remember the layout of the house, where all the rooms are and the furniture - everything. I remember potted plants, and a creaky front gate. I told my mum about this place ans she was surprised. It was my Grandparent's place in the Philippines, and the last time I had been there was when I was 2.

kimbirdy said...

One of my first memories is when I was around 3 and someone gave me my first balloon. It was red and beautiful! But since my hand was so small the loop slid off my hand and the balloon floated away. My big brother tried to jump and catch it for me, but to no avail. Bye Bye Balloon!

FutureLint said...

My first memory is from when my little brother was born when I was just turning three. I remember seeing my mom at the hospital and all that, but the part I remember the most was my dad stopped and let my sister and I pick out a stuffed animal from a guy who was selling them out of the back of his trunk (yes, we lived in a sketchy neighborhood in Chicago). We wanted a huge tiger that was bigger than both of us, but he said if we got that we had to share. So my sister got a terribly '70s Eyeore and I got a white seal with a red nose that I named Sammy. I still have him, though he's terribly dirty now!

What he ate, what I ate. said...

I have some very fuzzy "first" memories. Nothing too concrete, unfortunately... Plus, I have difficulty telling the difference between real memories and memories that I have created by having an experience related to me.

Carolina John said...

mine was having my grandparents take me to the circus when i was barely 4 yrs old. i thought my grandfather had a super long tounge because he got all of the cotton candy out of the bottom of the tube! scared the piss out of me. he died when i was 6, so it's also one of the only memories i have of him.

Diana said...

I was four, my brother eight. My mom helped us set up a Tang stand in the front yard to sell to passers-by. I guess I was drinking a lot of the profits because, at some point, I had to pee...really bad! So I told my brother not to sell any of the Tang until I got back from going to the bathroom. I went inside our very late 70s/early 80s blue bathroom (complete with white plastic butterflies covering the walls) and did my business. But out the window, I saw my brother selling Tang to a few kids! I went ballistic, tore down the stairs, and ran outside to yell at him. How could he?

Luckily, I have forgiven him and we are very good friends now. :o)

Xinaed said...

I don't think I have a memory, that is really more than just a split second, and or thought. My most vivid memory I guess, would have to be when I was just barely three, learning how to ride a bike. By myself! Lol. Boy was that fun. Fell off a few times, but once I got the hang of it, I wanted to ride all the time.

Generation Next said...

I don't know if this is the earliest, but I remember being read to/reading in her bed by my grandmother

peewee said...

My first memory is when I was getting my tonsils out. I was about 2 and I clearly remember being on the gurney being taken from my mom, looking at her upside down and seeing her cry. She was wearing a navy shift dress ala the early 70's and I remember thinking how pretty she was and why couldn't she come in there with me.

green ink said...

My first memory is of laying on the pungent leather seats of my father's back Pontiac (I always thought it looked like a gangster car) as he and I roamed the streets late at night looking for our dog that had run away. My mother was on night shift at the hospital, so he couldn't leave me home alone! I just remember everything being very dark - the night, the car. I was about 2.

Julie_c said...

I must have been two or three. We lived in a ranch house and had an attic with pull down stairs, which I was not allowed to go up. I remember my brother sitting at the top of those stairs with some small Barbie-type dolls (I think they were called Dawn dolls.) I wanted them so badly, but I was stuck at the bottom. He sat at the top and pretended to play with them just to torment me.

Nice, huh?

Zaolan said...

I don't really think I have much of a first memory. I do remember being at Disney world seeing mickey, but I don't know if that was a very happy memory for me as I remember being sad and I was probably 5? I don't know. I have a hard time remembering good things as a child.

Gabi said...

haha, so cute!!
my first memory is trying to put everything I thought was mine in a bag and carry it around day long. I thought I had to carry my stuff everywhere simply because it was mine!
p.s: I love your blog! :]

Anonymous said...

I remember my parents taking me to the mall to get my ears pierced. I was 2 years old and my dad set me up on the chair. There there were two ladies and they did both ears at the same time and I remember crying cause I was scared. And then we went to go get ice cream which heals all hurts when your that age and I was very happy :)

I remember it as though it was a dream, but a couple years ago I was recounting it to my mom and she was shocked that I could recall so many details correctly, since I was so little then!

Intelligence said...

My first memory was also when I was 2 and I was involved in a head-on car crash.

I remember asking my mom "what happened?" when the ambulance came to take us to the hospital. She replied, "we had a car wreck" thankfully no one was seriously injured.

Every day for the next 3 years every time I got in the car with my mom I'd say "Mom don't wreck the c

Anonymous said...

Love this post and the comments!

Like futurelint, my first memory is when my younger brother was born when I was 2 and we went to the hospital to see him for the first time. I remember asking the nurse why I had to wear an apron thingy (she said it was to keep the germs off the baby) and poking my new baby brother when nobody was looking so he'd wake up and do something interesting. He put up with a lot more poking, whacking, pinching, etc. over the next 12 years or so, haha.

Anonymous said...

My first memory is about elevators. When I was small and we went for the vacations, I had a tendency to run in the elevator as soon as it opened, and after I went in, the doors closed. ahah. that was so amazing. mom and dad just ran to catch me with stairs.

Anonymous said...

I believe my earliest memory is of feeding crackers to the giraffes at the zoo. I remember their teeth being HUGE and I would stare at them with big bright eyes hoping they wouldn't bite off my fingers.

Ashley Skye said...

I remember looking up at sunlight shining through apple leaves. Then my aunt and uncle called me over to play on the swing. I was about 18 months.

Liv said...

Oh gosh. I think the first kinda milestone memory for me was when I was standing outside me preschool classroom when I saw my dad walking down the hall with a t-shirt and pin that each said "I'm a big sister." I knew that my mom had gone to the hospital that morning and so I'd spent the whole day waiting for the news that my new baby brother had arrived. :)

Tanya said...

I remember our house in Makassar Indonesia with a wide front porch. I remember the huge window in the living room so low that a still nappied two year old could see out of without climbing on anything. I remember walking into the room and very clearly seeing a man without a nose (he had leprosy) on the porch, his face pressed against the window waiting for someone to come and give him some rice. It scared the bejesus out of me. I also remember buying ices from the street vendor, the bird cages out the back, the big tiled mundi and that my dad had special powers because sometimes at night when the power went off he could go outside to the big pillars holding the porch roof up and hit them to magically make it come back on!!

Anonymous said...

My first memory was actually pretty horrible. It was quite soon after I was born when a nurse grabbed me and brought me to a cold and dark sink to wash me. The water running into my eyes and ears and nose induced some kind of panic, and to this day I tense up when I am immersed in water.

It's a bit strange to have a memory so soon after birth, but other than that, I don't have any memories before two.

Anonymous said...

My first memory would be either a toss up between when my mom taught me about 911, or when i thought fish got thirsty. i can't differentiate because it was the same house.
1. my mom had explained if anything bad ever happened then i need to pick up the phone and dial 911 for help. later that day, my mom sliced her finger on a knife cooking dinner, and i ran for the phone and dialed 911. :]
2. i couldn't decide if the fish really enjoyed the water as much as people thought, so. i took my cup of red kool-aide and gave them a drink. my mom later found all of the fish died of consumption.

Zana Fauzi said...

I watched a black & white movie and I thought what a lame world it was years ago when colors were not invented yet and my dad toyed along with the idea until I discovered otherwise years later.

krista said...

i love this question!
i just wish i knew which memories were real and which weren't.
i even wrote about this months ago:

http://kristalynknott.blogspot.com/2008/07/mountain-out-of-ant-hill.html

(by the way, i heart your blog.)

Lost Moai said...

I must have been pretty young, because I was in one of those baby walker things that they don't make anymore. I was outside in the grass and the cat was playing with my dangling feet. My memory is the feeling of my feet touching the soft fur and the sharp claws.

Second earliest memory has to do with the same cat. He ran under the house one day. It was a mobile home so the A/C vents were on the floor. I spent the rest of the day going from vent to vent to see if I could see him and calling for him.

colormekatie said...

These stories are so fun!!

Anonymous said...

My first memory is of crunching away at the edible jewellery I had at my third birthday party. I still love the stuff!

Anonymous said...

My first memory was of my grandma teaching me how to swim in our backyard pool at age 3. We played "ring around the rosies" for hours it seems. I can still feel the heat on my head and the fluid movement of being pulled through the water.

Anonymous said...

my first memory is my mum coming into my room and saying "happy birthday, two year old!"

Anonymous said...

My very first memory is of catching a beautiful white and pink butterfly when i was coming home from kindergarten.... it's something i'll never forget.... it was so special :)

by the way, thanks for making my days a little less grey :D

Iris said...

My first memory is seeing my little sister for the first time, when she was born. I was 2,5 years old and I went to see her and our Mom to the hospital with our Dad.

Allison said...

My first memory is being on the back of a horse. His name was Goldmine. And I thought he was mine :) I probably only rode him a couple of times.

Anonymous said...

I can't be sure, but I think it might be me building a 9-piece puzzle with my aunt, or it was a dream I had that I was in a car with a friend of mine and we were talking through speech bubbles.

Anonymous said...

The oldest full memory I have is when I was about 4 years old. My parents, my brother and I were in the kitchen trying to figure out what to do for the evening. My parents finally decided to take us to the circus. They have never been terribly spontaneous people (I knew that even then), so it was an awesome treat.

Lo said...

My first memory was when I was around two or three and I woke up screaming "it hurts it hurts" and I was holding my leg. Then I realized that nothing hurt and after that.. I didn't remember anyone. i had to relearn who everyone was in my family.

cookie said...

I remember getting up during the intermission of a star wars, empire double feature that my mom took me to when I was 3. And I am still geeking after all these years!

La Woodstock said...

I was 3, the first day at infant school. At 4pm the nun took me to the school bus by mistake instead of an other little girl. I had this trip around my little town and the bus driver asked the mothers at every stop "Is this little girl yours?". At the end, the driver took me to school again and in front of the school I saw the nun and my mother. She was crying. I always feel so so bad after 33 years...

Anonymous said...

I was about 4 and had the best pink gingham robe. I would wear it and listen to Bambi on my little record player. It would make me so sad, but I loved listening to it.

Morgen

Heuss! said...

I remember being about three years old, dancing with my mom in our living room. We were dancing to the song, "Got My Mind Set on You" by George Harrison. I was wearing nothing a blue sweatshirt and a pair of underpants that had a little hole in the seat. My mom had cut a picture of Snoopy out of an old pillow case and used it to patch the hole. I always wanted to wear the underpants backwards, but instead we stopped dancing and my mom held me up to a mirror so I could see Snoopy on my fanny.

20something said...

I know this is an old post but I just have to share! My first memory is of my mom talking on the phone in the kitchen and I desperately wanted to sit in her lap...and I tried...and I tried...and I tried, but I just couldn't and I kept sliding off because her belly was too big. She was about 8 months pregnant with my soon-to-be little sister : )