A plastic helicopter. In the attic.

It must have been a cast-off from my older brother, and it goes back a looooooong time because it's the only memory I have of the attic as an attic (it was remodeled into bedrooms when I was two I think.

)

Memories sort of gradually trickle in, although some earlier memories have been "replayed" so often I don't know how real they are, and conversly I've forgotten lots of stuff that happened in high school and college.

My earliest memory must be from when I was 3 or 4 - before my brother (1.5 years older than me) started kindergarten. I remember playing hide and seek with the kid who lived next door to us. The kid had a big, scary dog who ate my brother's plastic toy sword. (I know I was that young because we moved to a different house a few months before my brother started going to school).

I have a bunch of snapshot-type memories from when I was young, but my earliest is of a half-awake half-dream I had of falling out of my crib. I was three, because my sister was a baby and we were still sleeping in my parents' room while they finished the upstairs of the house.

I don't really remember much of when I was young. Seeing pictures kinda triggers the moment that the picture was taken, but I don't really remember the circustances surrounding the photo (aside from the barest of details). My memories don't really get clear until high school. I remember talking to a psychology teacher after a class about memories because I told him that I didn't remember any of middle school (and this was when I was a freshman). He seemed worried, but couldn't offer any advice.
My two earliest memories have to do with kindergarden. I remember wearing a blue dress and having my name written on a paper yellow duck hanging around my neck, walking to the car, holding my mom's hand. The other was inside the school, sitting in my cubby, which was the one closest to the window because I was the last last name in the class, holding one of the tiny baby chicks our class raised in my hands. It was shivering.

I kinda wish I could remember better. I have journals and such, but they don't make sense. It seems like I'm reading someone else's thoughts.

Snapshots, starting around toddler-hood (I can describe my crib and the wallpaper in my room, my stroller, and other elements of my parents/grandparents' houses that were changed by the time I was 3 or so). They sort of trickle in more and more for preschool/kindergarten/1st grade.

The first year I can really remember in a sort of detailed, narrative fashion was when we moved to London for my 2nd grade year (so I was 7).

I had knew someone in college who swears he had absolutely no memories -- zero -- before he turned 12. He was 19 at the time.

Oh, and I have several early, vivid memories revolving around songs that were bit hits around 1972-73 (TONS of Elton John, also Three Dog Night, Don McLean, etc.), so definitely in the toddler/preschool range.

My earliest memory is standing in my crib, holding on to the railing, jumping up and down, and chanting, "I wanna get out." Must have been about 3. I remember there were some little books in the crib with me, and my jumping made them fall through the bars.

I remember playing in a sandpit when I was under 2 years old. I know it was before I was two because we moved to a house with no sandpit after that.

JanetLand: awesome, I remember several instances of the jumping-in-the-crib thing too! Mine was mainly accompanied by toy-throwing. I wasn't pitching a fit, I remember mainly being bored and it was cool to fling toys and watch them arc and bounce across the floor.

well, except after all the toys were gone. Then I actually got crabby.

I remember the layout of the house I lived in until 2 years of age, and eating peanuts out of the shell at the neighbor's house there. I remember the hardwood floors and the central heaters that were OUCHY HOT. I think I remember going tot he park there too, on my Dad's shoulders, to feed the ducks. But there are photos of that, so it could be memory based on artifact but I remember the fog and cool morning feeling, so I think it's legit.

lfr, I also had an Uncle Spunzy, who was called that because his haiuh was so spunzy.

The first thing I remember is a dream. I was about three at the time. In the dream, I was only two and therefore (by my far more mature three-year-old's reckoning) a tiny baby.

In the dream, I crawled up the washing machine and fell inside the drum where I was cushioned by the clothes. The water started to fill the drum, and the gentle agitation chugged and swirled sudsy water around me, warm wet clothing swaddling me. The lid never closed, so the light from the back door filtered through and lit everything with a soft haze. The water never reached my head, and I wasn't afraid, just filled with a sense of peace. It was so calm there: a small, warm space resounding with the beat of the motor, the light not too bright but not threateningly dark. I felt perfectly safe.

Even then, I knew this dream had something to do with my mother, though I didn't realize until years later what a perfect yearning for the womb it described.

(To balance the perhaps overwrought quality of that memory: the second thing I remember is the pretty porcelain buttons on my favorite dress.)

Also, do you feel more like they suddenly "switch on" at a certain age, or is it a more gradual snapshots/impressions/sounds/smells kind of thing?

My earliest memories take the form of snips and snaps of moments, mostly. I remember a moment standing in the back-yard door, wearing pink gingham and being stunned by the dazzling sunlight; dropping a Fluff jar filled with daisies and feeling the water splash my legs; the smell of the red cushions in the basement playroom while my sister played "Strawberry Fields Forever"; the feel of being shaken limb by limb into my too-tight snowsuit.

my earliest memory involves being in a crib during the sylmar earthquake in 1971. the casters were unlocked, and i was rolling around the room for what seemed like a full minute before my dad ran in to see if i was okay.

It's mostly snapshots:

My first memory is of when my younger brother was born. I was 2 1/4 years old. He was born with a cleft palate and harelip. I remember we had to look through a window from outside because we (the kids) weren't allowed into the area they kept babies with problems. My 2nd oldest brother held me up and I remember being disappointed that I couldn't see my new brother.*

The next thing I remember is running through a field with my older brothers when I was four.

*Mum says the first thing I did when they brought him home was run to the couch, sit down and hold out my arms and said, "I hold him now."

Since age about two and a half to three, I've had full memory and a very continuous sense of self. No switching point from When I Was A Child to When I Was Not A Child. I hear from others that that's unusual, not "switching" as you say.

I remember my sister getting me to run from my mother yelling "bathroom bathroom" when I was being potty trained, so she could laugh at Mom. (Kids were potty trained earlier then than now.) I remember my brother being taken out of the house in an ambulance from an overdose - I'm not supposed to remember that, they don't believe me, but I do. I remember toddling around, crossing my arms and looking worried. (He's more than fine now, an upstanding citizen and all - he must have been about eighteen.)

The first actual memory I have is of my mother calling me home when President Reagan was shot; I was 8 or 9, and I don't have anything before that. I don't actually have a lot after that, either. My memory is very spotty throughout my childhood and well into my teens, though, I I think I may be an atypical example.

I vividly remember being crib-size and crawling out of it to remove all the clothes from my baby dresser, and then crawling in the empty drawers to rest.

I was 2 & 1/2, in a place called Huskerville, NE, near Lincoln, that no longer exists (except for its chapel, which for some inexplicable reason is on the National Register of Historic Places), in the hot, dusty summer of 1954. It was a small place, just some old WWII barracks buildings that had been converted to cheap apartments for military families and UofN students, on the edge of what had been the old Lincoln Army Air Field during WWII. Perhaps 300 young families lived there.

And it was once the site, in 1952, of one of Nebraska's worst outbreaks of poliomyelitis, which killed 2 kids, and left 18 others partially paralyzed, due to an obscure plumbing problem with the sewers, which allowed a cross feed of waste water to the well farm that provided the drinking water for the place. But nobody really knew what caused the problem, when we lived there, yet, and thousands of kids caught polio, every summer, across America, back then.

But my oldest memory, is of that place, and a baking hot afternoon, when I trudged along the tarpaper and pebble covered wooden walks, between the buildings, put in because they were cheaper than real sidewalks. And of coming, suddenly, to a place between two of the buildings where a wire fence had been rolled around 4 haphazardly driven fence posts, to make a dog run for a big, mean Doberman.

I remember the Doberman leaping at me, snarling, and hitting the end of its chain, just inside the fencing, and I remember being so mortally terrified that I couldn't even breathe, much less cry, or yell. I remember how I dimly realized I'd peed my pants, and filled them too, and I remember how I thought my Mom would be mad when she found out I had done that.

And then suddenly, maybe just because it was too darn hot to stay so mad, the Doberman just layed down, and quit snarling. And I remember thinking that maybe he was a nice doggie, after all, and sticking my hand through the fence, and not being able to quite reach him. And I remember the screeching scream my Mother let out when she ran up behind me, to snatch me away, and how the Doberman jumped up at that, and went beserk, twisting and fighting to pull his chain out, and get us.

I remembered all that, in bright, sharp snatches for years. Details like the smell of the tarpaper on the walks, and the shimmer of heat waves rising in the too bright sun, close in front of a very short me, were always vivid. I remembered the black Nebraska dirt, and the crunchy feel underfoot of summer burnt grass in a place where nobody could afford to water grass.

I spoke about it one Christmas, to my Mom, when I was maybe 38 or 39, and tears welled up in her eyes, and she told me that she and I had had a big disagreement, perhaps about my taking a nap, and that I'd gone out the front screen door a half hour later, while she had been out on the back stoop, talking to a neighbor, trying to stay cool. When she realized, a few minutes later, that I was gone, she had yelled for the neighbor to come watch my brother, as she flew out the front door to look for me.

But I was nowhere to be seen, even though, ultimately, it turned out I wasn't more than 50 yards away. I'd gotten down from the wooden walkway, in order to stick my hand through the dog pen fence, and so, wasn't easily visible. So, she'd frantically run one way, and then the other, for several minutes, before determining that the neighbor woman was coming to watch my brother, and that she should carefully walk the whole housing development.

But her first sight of me, when she did finally see me, was watching me reach into a dog's cage, who could've bitten my arm off in a single chomp. Hence her scream, and her fright. And my clear, deep memory, still, of the smell of a baking bright, hot Nebraska August afternoon, and the taste of prairie dust hanging in the air, and of being, literally, scared shitless.

I've never been as frightened, since.

My 4th birthday. My birthday party. This neighbor girl showing up at the door with a round thing in gift wrapping. "It's a ball, she said."

Another time, either before or after that. My sister and I climbing around this breakwater. We are with my uncle Paul. I fall in and all I remember is the grey-green water, bubbles, and my rising and falling in the water, and saying "I guess I am drowning." Then a hand pulling me out and I am coughing and shivering and crying and my mom, very upset when she found out.

WAY back. I vividly remember vivid dreams from when I was three to five yrs old. Probably real-life snippets from earlier.

Does anyone think all your memories are stored somewhere in there?

I'm not supposed to remember that, they don't believe me, but I do.

rainbaby if I had a dollar for every time my mom's said that and I've corrected her, well I'd at least be able to buy a really nice dinner.

like you said, it's not just fun things, either. My parents got pretty heavily into recreational drugs and the hippie "let's just do whatever-the-hell we feel like, wooo!" scene, and there were certain situations where I even remember thinking to my preschool-aged self that I had to be the responsible one and take care of stuff. That's maybe a little messed up when I think about it now.

One of the scariest things I remember from my childhood was being left alone with my mom's college roommate, who promptly went on a bad LSD trip and I wound up having to figure out how to get her off the (3rd floor) balcony, because she wanted to fly. I ran and got a flashlight that I used to lure her back into the apartment (with the spot on the floor, you know, like teasing the dog? except not much fun and a lot more stressful). I got her into the hall closet, where it was nice and dark and I guess she felt safe. I gave her a blanket and my Pooh Bear, and crawled up on the sofa. My parents came home hours later and found me sitting there, bolt upright awake, sucking my thumb (which I *never* did) and staring at the closet like a cat at a mousehole.

My relatives always told me I was such a quiet, serious child back then, I wonder why...

I remember my brother being born when I was two and a half. I remember falling asleep on a slatted wood bench and trying to look inside the square window in the door of the delivery room. I wasn't tall enough.

...who promptly went on a bad LSD trip...she wanted to fly.

Sounds like a reasonably good trip.

Kidding.

I was similarly quiet and serious, though with a much less intense (but similar) situation.

I ran and got a flashlight that I used to lure her back into the apartment (with the spot on the floor, you know, like teasing the dog?

That's amazing. Did you really, at such a young age, understand LSD and talking someone down and the fascination with movement and lights and patterns and all, or was it intuition?

shane by that time (I was five) I had been around variously drug-influenced adults for several years. I didn't rationalise it exactly as you did just there, but I certainly knew from prior experiences with substance-addled people that A) she'd done acid and owing to A; that: B) the flashlight would probably work.

I was a practical kid. Once when I was nine, I fixed the water heater with duct tape and a stick, because it was the only thing I could think of, the basement was flooding, it was 9PM at night, and my mom was out of town (I was left home alone quite a bit as a kid and weird experiences notwithstanding, never suffered any permanent damage). Fortunately the leak was in the tank, right at the back along the wall, so I could just wrap the duct tape around the water heater circumferentially over the hole, then I took a mallet and jammed the stick (2x2" piece of scrap that I measured, cut to fit with a saw and everything, feel free to be outraged at the concept of a nine-year-old using a saw; honestly I was more inclined to be careless with fish hooks and I've got the scars to prove it) in between the hole and the wall, to pressfit it and seal the tape in.

The repair was good enough to hold for at least several months, until Mom could afford to get a new water heater. My folks were divorced by then, Dad went back to school for like, the next fifteen years, and Mom was an art major, so life could be a little hand-to-mouth at times.

I can remember some of the later part of last week ...

I have a few old stories... only about a tenth of what my brother can recall, though.

I'm great at recalling moments and snippets - enough to inspire a song but never enough for a novel (or even a novella).

I dimly recall our old house - the one we had before my parents' divorce when I was six. The main images from that time revolve around my brother.

I remember my paternal grandparents' house in a coal camp and how much I hated my grandfather's constant sermons. I remember all his dogs (he hunted raccoons).

I remember my mother having a fit because we brought her a live snake from the back yard. Our neighbour chopped it into several wriggling pieces with a hoe.

I remember my stepfather tying a rope around me and dragging me through the mud because he thought my brother and I were playing 'tug of war' too roughly (with my sister, who cried).

... I guess I could bring up a few things, but I rarely (if ever) think about the past. I'm too busy for that shit.

The first semi-vivid memory is of asking to be taken to the bathroom when we lived in the farmhouse in Ironia -- I think we moved from there when I was three or so. I think it may have been a holiday dinner; I vaguely recall that there was a lot of Xmas trimming around, and I think Grandpa was there.

A couple other "snapshot" memories -- die-cast toy cars and trucks that Christmas, Mom taking us out when little brother still had to ride in the stroller, playing on porch. I think that my little brother and I had side-by-side cribs, and remember awakening one winter evening and smelling aromas of broiled fish and coffee wafting up from the kitchen downstairs.

First memory I can really fix historically is the last time LBJ lit the National Christmas Tree -- watched him on TV. Thinking back on that, it's evident how thoroughly Vietnam broke him -- as a first-grader, I was thinking, "What a sad old man."

My first fixed memory is about 2 years and 4 months when my father chose me as his assignment for a photography class. I also have a vague memory of taking the afikomen matzah out of one of the sections in the window, but I don't know how old I was...that may have been the seder where my uncle had a manic episode ranting that he was Elijah, but I don't remember this.

Thanks for sharing. It's been fascinating reading.