What the oldest memory you have even if it just small details?
What I can remember is me coming out the womb crying and carried off to probably the nursery. After that is me being carried to my home in my mother’s arms and that about it.
Not much from my early years.
I have a vague memory or two which I think are from a place called Europa Park or something in the early to mid 80s as a toddler. Mostly an indoor dolphin show jumping through hoops, and a weird tunnel-based boat ride with animatronic frogs singing either side of the boat.
I do remember the moment I realised I could “Talk in my head” though, I was in the kitchen trying to reach the taps in the sink when I noticed I was talking without making noise. Then I realised I was talking to myself in my head. This was pretty incredible to me at the time, I rushed upstairs to tell my mum all about it. Turns out that was when I discovered my inner monologue.
1 Like
Erm, this question genuinely doesn’t really make sense to me in the way you’re probably expecting an answer (of a recounting of a remembered experience) because my brain doesn’t archive experiences like that.
Probably the earliest story about myself I know (see link for why I don’t describe this as remembering) is that I was playing with an egg cup as a baby in the bath and left on my own, I ended up dropping it. This tracks with a large scar I still have.
Did you make this thread exclusively so you could lie about remembering coming out of the womb cause it kinda seems like it
7 Likes
Yeah it hard to believe but yes I do remember that. As for how much I can remember in detail that is where it gets blurry with my vision was also a blur.
I remember my third birthday; getting out of bed and having my mom in her dressing gown putting candles on a Bundt cake 
earliest memories are of my brother not letting me play his nintendo 64. don’t remember anything earlier than that!
I basically only have 2 memories from before I was 6-7 years old. One is trying to underhand throw a basketball into the hoop in our driveway. The other is on my 4th birthday, when my brother was born and I asked if he was my birthday present.
OP, don’t read this if you don’t want your bubble burst, but you are almost certainly experiencing a false memory. Humans just don’t recall events from before they are 2 to 4 years old. It’s called childhood amnesia, and it is pretty much as universal a phenomenon as possible.
That probably the case. Same goes with my memory of having a NES when my brother said we only had a SNES.
The way that memories are formed and reformed by recounting them, to where people can create “memories” just from being told stories about thier life repeatedly makes me really really suspect people’s early childhood memories, and I’m totally convinced that memories about your own birth or 1st year of life are almost certainly created memories.
That’s very different from it being a lie. It’s as real a memory as anyone’s memory can be, it’s just that it was created after the fact and not from the actual experience. All memories are kind of suspect because of how our brains work. It’s really very interesting stuff!
Earliest memory that I’m confident wasn’t manufactured is of playing Sonic 2 with my mom when I was around 3 or 4 years old. I didn’t know the name of the game at the time. My mom would always get hit by the fish that jump up from below the bridges on Green Hill zone, so she would shout “Stupid fish!”. So for a long time I called Sonic 2 “Stupidfish”, as in “can we play Stupidfish, Mom?”
my kindergarten teacher pulling me away violently by holding my ear to stand in the corner
I think I forgot any kind of positive memories from my childhood unfortunately
I think I remember that on my 7th or 8th birthday, that we were going to a local “Chuck E. Cheese” style place with a different name. I remember waking up and being excited for it, and then later i remember being there and playing Cruis’n USA in the little “arcade” they had.
I generally struggle to remember most things about my childhood and teenage years, however.
My absolute earliest memory is from when I was about 3. My dad is standing the water of the YMCA pool and holding me with group of parents and toddlers/babies. The parents are singing the wheels on the bus and like dunking the kids in the water. I don’t remember any specifics except a very clear thought: If I cry loud enough they will stop. I have always hated that song since then. I know this is a true memory because I never told anyone until someone finally asked why I hated that song about 8 years ago. I confided that memory and my parents confirmed that happened and felt so bad about that. Apparently it was some program to get kids used to swimming early.
The absolute-earliest memory I have (which is not a memory at all in actuality) is going to see Godzilla at what I think back then was called Valley View Theater in Roanoke, it’s Regal something or other now. I don’t remember the movie but I remember being able to walk and the lady at the counter giving me this toy. I was born in July 97 and that movie came out in May 98, so I would’ve only been 8 months old, which means this was impossible. On top of that though I did have that toy, it wasn’t from movie theaters but from Taco Bell kids meals.
I can’t say which of my actual earliest memories come first. I can’t remember if it’s my second or third birthday, but I remember the toys I got and the cake my mom made, which was neat; it was an ant made of 3 cakes, one chocolate, one vanilla, and one marble. She used gram crackers for dirt and M&Ms for the eyes and That Red Twisty Stuff I’m Not Gonna Try Spelling for legs and antennae. The icing was all chocolate and that’s when we both learned I didn’t like chocolate. I also remember a ton of stuff about the house we lived in then, and I wasn’t going to preschool until after we moved out.
The basement of my home before I moved when I was 4 was split between a main, open room and two side rooms on each side. One lead to a spare room, the other to a laundry room. I would call the spare room the pink room because it had pink cloth curtains that would make the whole room pink (though still a little dark) in the day. There was a small tv in the pink room with the NES hooked up to it, while the main area of the basement had a bigger tv with the SNES hooked up.
This was before I went to pre-school (which I started when I was 3), so I had to have been 2 or just barely 3 at the time. I was playing Super Mario World, but it was very hard for my preschool self. I climbed the big, tall stairs to go get my older brother for help, who was home from school sick. He got mad at me that I was asking for help with a video game when he was sick in bed with the flu. I got sad so I went in the pink room and laid down on the bed, eventually playing duck hunt, but generally just was in there to hide because I thought my brother was going to find me again and yell at me again.
I know that theater! My wife had to see a specialist in Roanoke, so we had to stay in town for a bit. I think we went to that theater to watch Fellowship of the Ring at least four times in 2-ish days.
Not a whole lot to do in Roanoke…
My earliest memory is from when I was probably not even 2 years old. I was in a place that was not my aunt’s house (where my mom and I were living at the time) and I managed to get into a cupboard in a kitchen somewhere. I open the cupboard. Then my vision turns all amber-yellow. My earliest memories are in still images so each piece is like a panel from a comic.
I asked my mom about this this year and she instantly recalled it, shocked that I could remember anything that early. We were at a church. She was in a group therapy meeting and I managed to escape her sight, went into the kitchen, and got some cleaning soap on my face and eyes. She hadn’t thought about that night in decades, she said. My theory is that memory was my first real feeling of physical pain and surprise, so my brain filed it away as important information.
See hearing someone say that is bizzare to me because I grew up mostly in my mom’s hometown two hours west of Roanoake in the mountains proper, we had a population of 4000 something and every other weekend when I went to Roanoke for visitation it was super exciting because there was so much to do!
Earliest i can come up with is my father not being happy with me not wanting to eat soup. I recall nothing else about that moment, and frankly, almost nothing else about childhood.
