What is your earliest memory?

The Catboy

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My memories are a mess for a variety of reasons and I don't have any memories before 2013. My earliest memory is the day I woke up from a suicide attempt through alcohol poisoning and deciding that I needed to turn my life around.
 

JuanMena

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I actually have memories of the room I was when I was born. Not kidding, sometimes I describe said room to mom and she goes like: :blink: that's where we had you when you were born.

I too have memories of my first birthday. The house was nearly empty but full of people (aunt's, grandparents, cousins, sisters and parents) and the living room was decorated with ballons of many colours, blue, red, yellow, green and white.
One of my cousins broke a plate that day.
That's as early as I can go.
Can't tell why I'm able to remember the hospital room where I was born but not what happened from age 0 to 1 though.
 

Dust2dust

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That's a subject I've been thinking about a few times. I think the earliest memory I've got is me being rocked by my mother on a rocking chair. Now, the way I remember it, I was being a young jerk, and I threw my head backward violently, and hit her on the chest. She then just decided to drop me on the floor, and said to me "Eat shit!". This is more than likely the reason why I remember it, because I took that as literally meaning she wanted me to eat feces. I thought "Yuck! How gross!" :rofl: I told that story to my siblings but they don't believe our mother would have ever said something like that. Well, I'm 95% sure it actually happened. I still love my late mother. I deserved it, and it made me remember the event.
 
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The Real Jdbye

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I remember going to a cabin with my mom and her bf when i was like 5. But I'm not sure if I actually remember that, or I just remember the image I saw of it that mom had.
The earliest clear/vivid memories I have are of mom renting a SNES when I was like 7 (though she did it multiple times) and us playing Bubsy and Donkey Kong Country all day. Good times.
 

sarkwalvein

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Memories of the past are really fuzzy and hard to pin to a specific date.
But I guess I remember the last time Argentina won a FIFA World Cup and the following endless festivities around the city... and that was 1986, so I was 3 years old.
I also remember somebody giving me 1 USD and telling me "it is the same as 8₳", and thanks to the historic hyperinflation of Argentina it is easy to say this had to be between 1987 and 1988.

I probably remember things older than those, but it's hard to be sure if they happened prior or later, as well... memories don't come with a reliable "timestamp".
 

Jayro

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I was 3 years old, and playing with a Donald Duck floor puzzle. My dad came home from grocery shopping, and he pulls another floor puzzle out of the paper bag for me to play with. I was obsessed with floor puzzles at the time. (And apparently really good at putting them together without any help.)
 

JaapDaniels

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i remember moments with my grandfather, playing wierd faces... he died when i was 4...
i can't really tell the moment...
and i remember playing witch a girl (her name was Linda) in the sandbox over and over again.. she used to live on the corner of our street with her older sister (called Eva).
the family went to another place around the same time my grandfather died.
i never saw her again, that was the only girl i can remember that i always could talk and play with without thinking.
 

GothicIII

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Scientifically the earliest memory you can save is with ~18 months onwards. But while growing up the brain changes and you forget those memories as you grow. It is pretty much impossible to really remember things from a very young age. Kids struggle very hard to remember things which are a year ago.
All memories tied to it are implanted memories which you heard from others.

Implented memories are a very strong tool for manipulation. As you hear them you imagine the pictures and emotions to this. The more often your hear them the more you are convinced that these are your memories and the stronger and clearer those memories will be.
 
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Dust2dust

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Scientifically the earliest memory you can save is with ~18 months onwards. But while growing up the brain changes and you forget those memories as you grow. It is pretty much impossible to really remember things from a very young age. Kids struggle very hard to remember things which are a year ago.
All memories tied to it are implanted memories which you heard from others.

Implented memories are a very strong tool for manipulation. As you hear them you imagine the pictures and emotions to this. The more often your hear them the more you are convinced that these are your memories and the stronger and clearer those memories will be.
Very interesting! I had read or heard about this before, but (pun intended or not) my memory fails me.
 
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FAST6191

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As above then there are limits, and memory can very easily be tricked and with the rise of photographs and home video can be augmented/replicated/supplemented (as a simple test chances are most photos would be taken by adults at adult heights, what then is your perspective on such things and does it match a child's height?).

For whatever reason I have a pretty hot memory* out of the box, especially for spacial and conversation, and it started really early (as in my dad thought I had learned to read ridiculously young but in fact had memorised the book and corresponding page turnings/timings, caught me out by fake turning a page or double turning a page).
So yeah I have various snippets going to places, speaking to people, meeting people. Can redraw what I reckon to be fairly dimensionally accurate floor plans for some places I used to visit often but have not been to since I was maybe 4 (I recall the same people building their new house afterwards and going there).
Some kind of consistent memory is a few years after that, maybe from around 6 but was getting better throughout that.
This has led to plenty of "I am shocked you remember that" and me describing room layouts and contents of things I saw young, with some parties involved dying a year or so later, that nobody would have a photo of (or if they did it would be a shot of a person in a chair and not a wide angle of the room).

*I can't said eidetic, which I am somewhat thankful for as that seems like a horrible trait to have, but pretty close for many things and even more so if I am interested in the subject at hand (I used to quite like going to car boot sales, can't remember whatever household tat some people were flogging but can remember months of toolboxes down to what places on their tables it was all stored from the tool sellers even if it has been over a year since things shut down). I suck at remembering names though. Can boost if further with memory tricks too.
 

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