Reply to: Earliest childhood memory

[RichardCranium]

My earliest memory is examining the underside of the rear axle of a timber lorry. I recall it pulling away and watching the axle go round as the bed of the lorry passed over me.

We moved away from that house next to the timber yard when I was two.

In the next house my mum fell down the stairs and I stood and stared at her as she asked for help. I didn't know what to do.

A few days later it was my 3rd birthday and dad did the birthday cake because mum was still in hospital. He asked how I wanted the cake decorated and I said with Smarties. He said that was silly but I insisted so he stuck Smarties to this iced cake. I can see the cake clearly and I can remember him saying he thought it spoiled the cake. (I was 3, he was 43, what was the cake expert? Thank you.)

We left that house when I was five. I could write all night about my memories from living there: the various dogs we owned, being stung by a wasp in my welly, the lad up the road with a real working toy steam traction engine, the posh kid with the tree house, trying to convince another child to eat laburnum seeds, collecting berries in plastic boxes from the hedgerows, the big hill, the allotments at the end of the garden, my brother lighting magnesium ribbon tied to the garden fence, my brother getting caught trying to put the resulting fire out, putting my fist through my Etch-a-Sketch because it was too hard to do, burning 'f u c k' into the wooden clothes horse with a magnifying glass, telling one of the dogs to steal my mum's toast and it did, the horrific children's story book that still feeds my nightmares, Santa coming down the road on his sleigh in the snow late on Xmas Eve (it really happened: apparently it was the Round Table or Rotary on a horse-pulled milk float), the mobile shop (like a removals van with a grocer's inside), my mum washing her hair and running across the road to the hairdressers to get them to style it, the green and silver lipstick in the window of the hairdressers, the butler sink in the huge kitchen.

I also remember being taken down the HUGE steps to the front door when we first moved in: so I was 2 then.

[HairyArsedBloke]

Chasing boys - it's always going to end in disaster.

I dunno

[NickFitz]

Gosh Nick, judging by your optimistic leftie thinking I was guessing you were in your 20s.

Nope, that's the voice of experience

[Lucy]

I remember my mum voting in the 1966 General Election - I was three, getting close to four.

Once she'd got that boring nonsense out of the way we got on with the important business of buying The Beano

But that can't be my earliest memory - clearly I could read The Beano, and I have vague memories of my sister teaching me how to do that (well, not just The Beano), which was when I'd just turned three... so nearly a year before that election.

Gosh Nick, judging by your optimistic leftie thinking I was guessing you were in your 20s.

[NickFitz]

I remember my mum voting in the 1966 General Election - I was three, getting close to four.

Once she'd got that boring nonsense out of the way we got on with the important business of buying The Beano

But that can't be my earliest memory - clearly I could read The Beano, and I have vague memories of my sister teaching me how to do that (well, not just The Beano), which was when I'd just turned three... so nearly a year before that election.

[cailin maith]

oops

[lilelvis2000]

Going swimming at the pool in Walsall. Playing with large block at the pre-school. Going out in -12F weather in Canada and learning to ice skate on my own backyard pond. (I don't recall the flight over at all) Those were the days!

[TimberWolf]

not quite - I was adopted and don't remember much before that... Remember my first day at school too - was mid way through the process and didn't know what my name was... got my fist name right but... that was about it

[cailin maith]

Did they farm you out after birth for a few years then?.... they must have been contractors!!

not quite - I was adopted and don't remember much before that... Remember my first day at school too - was mid way through the process and didn't know what my name was... got my first name right but... that was about it

[beeker]

Mine is meeting my dad - remember getting off the bus and I was wearing a tan/camel coloured coat, I remember thinking he talked funny... Mammy doesn't like to hear that - cos I don't remember meeting her first

I think I was about 3

Did they farm you out after birth for a few years then?.... they must have been contractors!!

[cailin maith]

Mine is meeting my dad - remember getting off the bus and I was wearing a tan/camel coloured coat, I remember thinking he talked funny... Mammy doesn't like to hear that - cos I don't remember meeting her first

I think I was about 3

[ace00]

I remember hardly anything from my childhood, even during primary school and later, it's highly annoying. Everyone else seems to recall loads. I suspect the late-teens boozing may have killed off a few too many brain cells....

Yeh me too. Except the ladybird invasion of '76. Damn those ladybirds.

[oracleslave]

must have been 2 or 3.

I don't think I can remember much before 5

[realityhack]

Remember riding on the back of my brother's motorcycle around our orchard - must have been 2 or 3. Also have vague memories of the house we lived in then.

[oracleslave]

Chasing a boy around at nursery school, slipping over on the shiny wooden floor and landing on a bracket that was holding up the playpen. It cut my backside - I still have the scar. I was too embarassed to tell anyone so I didn't go to hospital until my mother took me home and saw it.

I think I was about 3 or 4.

Chasing boys - it's always going to end in disaster.

"My old man used to say, before he left this world, never chase buses or women. You always get left behind."
-- "Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man"