I was standing in my crib in the middle of the night looking at my parents sleeping in their bed. I was three, probably three and a half - I know this because my baby sister was in her crib right next to mine. And I fell from the crib onto the floor. It was such a very long way down and I was afraid of the heights. To this day I still don't know if it was a dream or not.

That same summer, I wandered away from the house (my parents own 10 acres, and my grandparents own 10 acres, and each of my uncles had 5 of their own acres, all adjacent to each other; there was plenty of woods). I don't remember wandering away, but I do remember one of my brothers finding me in the field through the woods behind the house. I was petting the horses my uncle kept back there, and I didn't want to leave them but he made me. When I got home I got big hugs and a big spanking for wandering off when I was only 3. My family still likes to talk about it - apparently one of the horses had an awful temper, and everyone was surprised he hadn't kicked me.

I remember when I was about two or three years old my mum tying me with a length of cord to a tree to stop me from wandering off. I don't think it ever occurred to her to, you know, watch me herself or anything.

I know it was when I was three or younger because we moved from that house before I was four. It wasn't a one-off, it happened most days.

This was in a tiny village in the Blue Mountains, NSW, where we had a variety of interesting wildlife inhabiting our garden, including redback and funnel web spiders (both venomous) and a delightful snake which goes by the name of the Death Adder.

I was a wanderer too ej. My mum made me a wear a harness with a leash, after climbing out of the car window when she popped into a shop for just a minute, and I was brought home by the police 5 hours later after I told them my name was Natty Googoo.

Anyway - my earliest memory is of my mother breastfeeding my sister, in a rocking chair in a shaft of sunlight in the room with the deep purple shag carpet that was to be my room for years (they had a matching violet vinyl-sided waterbed and a bright purple HQ Kingswood panel van. The seventies were awesome). She only breastfed for a month or so, and I was 2 1/2 when my sister was born. I also distinctly remember my third birthday party.

I don't know what my earliest memory is, but I used to have a panel van just like that one, goo!

I have a hard time distinguishing early memories. I know that anything pre 5-years-old happened in Wisconsin, and I have plenty of memories from then. I just can't tell if I was 2,3 or 4 years old, ya know?

Some of the highlights: my sister pouring an entire cup of lime Kool Aid over my head. My sister writing me a letter in braille, using the alphabet from the back of her Hellen Kelly book. Eating scrambled eggs at a friend's house. They put Ritz crackers in the eggs, which seemed really weird to me. (Still does). I remember being very embarrassed when I was sitting in a circle at preschool, because I'd leaned down and kissed (one of my) "boyfriends" on the forehead. I can remember people from that time. I remember what the house looked like. I remember watching some girls jumping rope Double Dutch style and singing "That's the, way uh huh uh huh, I like it, uh huh uh huh." That's my first memory of noticing racial differences. I remember my mom's Toyota Corona, off white. I remember certain rooms of the house better than others. The basement was where I watched Sesame Street, Zoom, and the Electric Company. The carpet was black shag interspersed with orange and red. We had a wet bar, too. I recall eating fried balls of dough in a syrup (Loukoumades) And there are many other random memories from that time. Those are the ones that stick out the most.

I was probably around 4. My mother and father were in the midst of one of many of their terrible fights. They were in the kitchen. My mother grabbed a pair of scissors and attempted to stab him with them. My dad wrenched them out of her hand. The fighting proceeded.

My earliest memory is walking on a specific sidewalk (around from the front of the school to the playground area), my mother squeezing my hand really hard, wearing a blue dress and my name shortened to 'rosie' on a yellow duck that was on a piece of yarn looped around my neck. It was the kindergarden orientation.

Next earliest is still during kindergarden, when I was sitting in my cubby, the closest one to the window to the playground outside, petting one of the chicks we had gotten from a local chicken farm, and being very, very sad that we had to let the chicks go soon.

Standing up in my crib, jumping up and down, and chanting, "I wanna get out."

Seeing my brother (about 18 years older) being taken out of the house on a streacher on a drug overdose. I was two, looking worried, hands on hips.

Age 4, my parents explaining that just because both their first names were spelled with four letters, and my sister's was spelled with four letters, didn't mean that "Laurie" was spelled "L-O-H-E" as I had just done on my football, but they were really proud that I had attempted it.

Fourth birthday party. Some neighbor kids show up with this gift, a large round, bouncy object wrapped in giftwrap. The girl, whose name I forget, says, as they come through the front door, "it's a ball."

writing a comment on metachat about my earliest memory.

(# I don't have the best memory #)

Looking down at my feet, while standing up in a baby walker. I believe I was standing on 70's yellow kitchen linoleum, wearing white shoes.

I remember my younger brother being born. I was 2 years and 3 months old. We went to see him at the hospital; he was in the children's ICU because he was born with a cleft palate and hair lip. I remember being lifted up to look in an observation window.

I was four in my next memory (running through a field with my older brothers), five in the next one (bad memory) and then my first day of kindergarten at six years old (December birthday, so I was older than most).

I was sitting on the concrete steps of the apartment house we lived at, "talking" to the two small concrete lions on either side of the steps. I had to be around two. I also remember being afraid to go up the stairs at night to go to bed - Hey, it was DARK up there! We moved from there when I was almost 2 1/2.

(Funny side note: My brother is 5 years younger than I; hence, he never lived in that apartment. Fast forward to his late twenties - he and his fiancee rented the SAME apartment, without knowing it's history. Mom had a kick out of that when she first went to see it.)

I remember riding one of those bouncy horses (age 4ish); my mom breastfeeding my brother (and me emulating her with a doll), age 5. I actually have many memories, not all of them good. It's a bit strange, I think, to remember so much.

i don't know the chronology of memories before age three.
i didn't quite get that until i was about seven or eight.