Comments on: What’s your first memory?

By: norman denney

norman denney — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 16:19:05 +0000

My first memory was from about the age of two. There was a rare heavey Georgia snowstorm that had filled our front yard with about four or five inches of snow. My grandmother took me outside dressed so thickly that I could barely walk. She placed plastic bread bags over my shoes. They were held up by rubber bands. She held my hand as I enjoyed the smell and sound of the snow crunching beneath my feet. So wonderfull. My father had an early CB base station and the tall tower cast a shadow across the snow and I tried to step on it, too young to understand why I could not make it bend. Her grandfather, she later told me, had been shot in the back during the Civil War and had been given morphine for the pain and had become addicted to the drug. This may sound odd, but she had memories of walking across his yard as the empty glass morphine ampules crunched beneath her feet as a child. To this day I think about that when I hear the crunch of snow. A few years before she died in 1980 when I was about 14, the local TV weather began giving the wind chill factor. One day I was at her house and she was watching the TV weather forcast and she got upset. I asked her why. “It’s that windshield factory! You would think instead of bragging about how much colder it was inside that place than outside, they’d get them poor workers some heat!” Perhaps I should have corrected her but I never did. Somehow I think it would have been wrong.

By: Cheryl Ewers

Cheryl Ewers — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:57:55 +0000

I have been thinking about this a lot, lately. Recently, I attended my nephew’s third birthday, and just casually muttering, “I remember my third birthday…” and my mother-in-law said, “Really?” and I said, “Yes, I remember my second birthday, too. I was walking in the table, there were balloons, and my aunt and cousin were there. I didn’t like them too much and I remember wishing they weren’t at my party.” We laughed. Well, a few months later, I was looking at a photo album at my mother’s home. I come across that very birthday…and there I am, walking on the table (and I remember feeling the flatness of my shoes as the most significant physical factor)…and I look at the date…and it’s actually a year earlier than I’d thought. It was, in fact, my first birthday. Then the same thing happened on the next page…but it wasn’t the date; it was the obviousness of my being less than one year old. It appears to have been my first Christmas, judging by the decor, and anyway I certainly remember a certain gift being unwrapped: it was a plastic saxaphone…and I remember being so eager to play with it and then grabbing it and blowing on it and pressing the big plastic keys. Well, here I am in this photo…a little dumpling wrapped around this big toy, but with the cutest, most sincere hand positioning on this instrument, and the “reed” in my mouth. I was, then, ten months old, and I think that’s the earliest of my clear memories. I couldn’t understand what people were saying, but remember feeling that people were getting a big kick out of seeing me play this thing. And, you know, these early memories of feeling fear, delight, and even being self-conscious have helped me understand that kindness must be administered to all creatures; that we should not “use” them for the “bettering” of our human lives because it’s highly likely there is a sense of self in each of these creatures. So I adopted a vegan lifestyle as my expression of love for all levels of cognizance.

By: MyFirstMemory.org

MyFirstMemory.org — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 22:04:58 +0000

Great post and comments - check out , which is basically a compendium of first memories...

By: Peteris

Peteris — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:39:40 +0000

I came to this blog after googling to find out more about strange flashback I experienced today.
I’m 37. My first memories are from age 3-4, as usual. But today, in the middle of conversation about immunity and my thoughts about how important breastfeeding is for immunity of a child, I had a detailed and absolutely overwhelming flashback about how I was breastfed myself… My nose bumping against white, warm and soft flesh, sound of my mother’s voice, warm milk flowing into my mouth, movements of my jaws, sweet smell, cozy position, feeling of happiness…
After the flashback I wasn’t able to talk to others for couple of minutes, tears flowing from my eyes. The feeling was genuine like a nightmare is just after the awakening, but, of course, no one can tell was it a real memory or a wake dream.
BTW, I was so surprised afetwards to see that this blog uses the same WP theme as I use in Latvia… GMTA. But my blog is more satyrical than personal. Best wishes, America! Bush gave you an unique opportunity to have just one direction to go – upwards 🙂 Sorry for mixing subjects.

By: Vanna White

Vanna White — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 18:44:16 +0000

Hello…Man i just love your blog, keep the cool posts comin..holy Saturday . Vanna White

By: lgude

lgude — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 03:30:17 +0000

Having a bath in the bathroom sink. Pretty young to fit. I can remember my mother leaning over me much younger than I usually remember her and the overflow of the sink – 3 vertical slots with rounded ends. 40 years later I managed to go back and visit the house and the sink was still there with its three slots. I remember the slosh of the water in the sink, my mother’s voice, the sense of an end of day ritual. I had left that house when I was 3 and I found I remembered a lot – but often only when I got into an viewing angle close to the original one. There were also heaps of slate waste from a quarry on the property which caused me to understand why I had, as an adult, always had a strong pulling feeling of darkness and mystery whenever I saw exposed broken slate. (Now I know when get that uncanny feeling that some memory may be being triggered.) During the course of that day of rediscovery I recalled sitting between my father and my uncle in a flathead Ford pickup and going the the grain mill in a town about 20 miles away. I remembered the name of the town and went and inquired of a pharmacist there who was about my own age. He said there were two such mills in those days and that one was gone and one still there. Mine was still there just as I remembered it. These memories don’t fade on me even though I am 65.

By: Mark in Portland

Mark in Portland — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:54:14 +0000

The first memory I can put a date on is the day of JFK’s assassination. I was 3 1/2. I remember my mom standing in the kitchen and, I thought, laughing. I remember asking her why she was laughing, but she was actually crying. She told me the President had been shot.

By: Michael J. Totten

Michael J. Totten — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:54:29 +0000

I escaped from my crib and crawled away while my mother said I needed to get back in. I remember not quite understanding what she was saying, though I had a general idea of her point. I was young enough not to understand English just yet.

By: Drew

Drew — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:44:56 +0000

Hello people!

My first memory was of my Mom looking down at me, and I felt like she was just the greatest thing I could imagine. I had to be about 12 months or so. The next memory was my older brother (9 years my senior) changing my diaper. I remember my legs we flopping and kicking around and he slapped me on the leg and said something to the effect of. “hold still, damn it!” After that I remember moving to a big house with railroad tracks behind it, and seeing a mousetrap. I talked to my Mom about these later and she said that we moved to that house in about 1955, so I was about 2. My memories pick up again when I was about 4 and I fell with an old style glass jar (the kind with a ring to hold it) and cut my right arm BAD. I was afraid when they put me in the ambulance, and asked them not to turn on the siren… I was four then, and my arm still bears the scar. I will never forget the look of absolute terror on my brother’s face, and my aunt wrapping my arm in a dish towel and squeezing real hard. In the hospital I saw fat bubbles in the wound… I am 54.

By: Bugs

Bugs — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 17:08:35 +0000

Two or three years old. At the pediatrician’s – to take a blood sample, they had this “game” where you would try to run your finger through a simple maze; when you came to a certain spot, an “alligator” would “bite” your finger – which of course was the lancet poking you. Devious bastards…