Your earliest memory?

[Panda]

The earliest memory i have from my childhood:
i was probably 2 or 3.
i remember being in my front garden, my mum was planting some sort of plants and i was waddling up and down the garden.
waddling for a bit, falling, waddling for a bit, falling, waddling for a bit, falling, waddling for a bit, falling, and so on.

i also remember watching my brother climbing the trees in the garden and me not being able to.

[dickieC]

I remember the vision of the doorstep at the back door of the first house I lived in rushing up towards me as I fell onto it, knocking my two front upper teeth back up into the gums. I was less than two. Ouch.

I also remember almost being knocked over by a huge lorry outside the chemist shop, but my mum got hold of me in time. Must have been about three.

And being in hospital for a hernia operation when I was two and being very, very scared of needles. Still mildly phobic about them today.

Favourite though: trying to dig a tunnel under the playgroup building when I was four.

[KelliV]

I was about one (yes one) and was in Fort Washington park with my parents and their friends and THEIR kids who were my age. The grownups were trying to take pictures of us ... and I remember the sun being in my face and mom saying "smile kelli", but I didn't feel well.... I tried to smile, but just couldn't.

The resulting picture is a family classic ... the two cute smiling toddlers ... and me ... puddleglum

[Kerstique]

My earliest memory is little more than an image
I was a year and a couple months old, sitting on the floor next to our couch. I can dimly remember the texture of the couch, the TV and speakers across the room, the uncertainty of what was down the hall even though I lived there, the sounds of my mother in the kitchen
but what really left an impression, made the moment memorable, were some stickers I was looking at, that I still have somewhere in a sticker book. They are little Valentine's stickers with cupids surrounded by rainbow hearts. the hearts look like they are made of light, some are concentric heart outlines, some are all individual and look like spotlights in the sky at night. The background was black. I can't really describe them but they boggled my little mind, the most beautiful, wonderful thing I had ever seen. The stickers continued to fascinate me for years to come, pretty much setting the tone for all my ambitions in life. They were beautiful.

The hall thing.. It seems like until I was about 4 I never quite knew what was in the part of the apartment I wasn't in, or being surprised coming around the corner and seeing how short the hallway was. I know I had a lot of dreams about the place being laid out differently, or finding weird rooms. In one dream there was a window into a stairwell and there was a man out there (eek!). I can remember looking around for that window for months before finally realizing I must have dreamt it.

[Eruantale]

When I was about two years old... all right, a bit of background here: when my parents had me, they were just fresh out of the university, and had got a small flat. Right next door to us lived a family who owned a cat named Timothy, and seeing as our balconies were connected to each other, Timothy had this habit of coming over to our balcony and into our flat, and was practically an official member of our household.

Anyway, I had these fluffy yellow shoes... and I suppose Timothy didn't like them very much for some reason, because my earliest childhood memory is old Tim running across our sitting room and attacking them... and the sound of my own laughter, followed by the sound of my gran running out of the kitchen, yelling 'NO! BAD KITTY! BAD!'

By the way, dickie, that's some childhood you've had. The most I've ever done was bruise my nose badly while trying to crawl out of the sandbox. *rubs her nose in memory*

[dickieC]

It wasn't all acccidents and operations. And my parents took very good care of me. Just those are the bits I remember. I also remember being held in my mother's arms while watching the removal men carry furniture upstairs when we moved house when I was 2.

[bealeblues]

i can remember when i was 2, in california, there was a sack of balloons on a garage shelf that i couldn't reach and i was pissed... i was 2 b/c we moved from california after that and we had a finished basement instead of a garage....

[NekoPunk]

i remember one my my earliest memories was us moving to a new apartment. i remember sitting on the floor by the front door, looking down the hallway across the room. i was by myself, (my parents were moving stuff in and whatnot) and jimmy buffet's "son of a sailor" was playing in the background as 'moving music'. i remember a mirror over the fireplace, and i remember that it was nighttime. but, that's about all. i had to have been just over one or so.

[blumem]

My earliest memory, verified by my mother's shock at my rememberence of such an early and insignificant event, was of an outing when I was around 1 to a butchers. It wasn't our usual butcher, it was a butcher far away. I don't remember what we got, why we were there, not sure that I would've known that at the time anyway though. All I remember was that I was there, with my mum, my grandma, and a plastic horsey kiddy ride, which I wasn't allowed to ride on, but wasn't really interested in anyway. I also remember that I was wearing a dress because I was in the presence of my grandma, which apparently is a reasonable excuse to dress your 1 year old in stupid dresses that they hate.

Why is that butchers embedded firmly into my memory?

Your guess is as good as mine.

- Em