What are some of your earliest memories ?

hollydolly

hollydolly

SF VIP
Location
London England
Think of something ..that you can remember from when you were very young an has stuck in your mind... doesn't have to be a first memory... just any memory from when you were a child that occasionally pops up into your mind from a trigger...good , bad, funny, sad...


I was watching something tonight, which triggered a memory I haven't recalled in many years.

I was 9 years old.. I was getting taken by a social worker, along with 2 of my siblings, in a Cab, to a foster home... this would be the third time for me.. and the first for my 2 younger siblings.

We'd had no advanced warning this was going to happen.. and we were sullen and clearly upset ... .if we could have run from that cab we would have.
Clearly the social worker realised this.. as she had the cab stop at a shop.. in the city.. and made us promise not to run as she got out ..

My 8 year old brother was very tempted as was I, but we also had our 6 year old sister.. so we didn't... and the social worker came back after a few minutes, and she had bought sweets ( candy) for us.. the type we'd never had before, but good quality chocolate... .... clearly realising how upset we were at the situation were in... she gave us each the chocolate.. and altho' we'd not been crying prior , I think she felt that maybe it would help us keep from getting more upset..

Anyway just a small snapshot of a memory...

What's yours?
 

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rbtvgo said:
believe it or not I remember standing up in someplace that had high bars. I suspect it was a crib but at this point don't know. Memories are really fuzzy that far back. Don't remember pain or any dramatic experiences. Just images and memories.
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that is also one of my first memories. I was 14 months, I'd been fostered out for the first time.. I remember being held in the arms of the foster mother as my own mother waved at us from the back window of a cab,

i remember then being in the foster house in a cot ( crib).. with the sides up, standing, crying looking at a closed door... the door opened a young boy came in, even at that young age I knew the difference between younger children and older..

he'd been sent to get me. picked me up out of the cot, and started to go downstairs, and dropped me... the whole length of the stairs.


That foster home was never spoken about in our household...so no-one could have told me about this event....

when I was about 15 , I mentioned this memory to my mother and she was aghast.. her very words were '' you can't possible have remembered that because you were only 14 months old ''.. ( she'd gone into hospital to have my brother at that time )..... so I knew it wasn't my imagination.. it had actually happened for real..
 

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I can remember my mother chanting "This little piggy went to market, etc..." as she played with my toes. I couldn't have been more than 2-3 years old.

Another was right after WWII when stores used to give out plastic packages of margarine with a yellow dye capsule inside. You'd have to squeeze and knead it to mix it up to become yellow. I was squeezing it one day, and t broke-- oozing margarine all over the place.

Funny what sticks with us...
 
ChiroDoc said:
I can remember my mother chanting "This little piggy went to market, etc..." as she played with my toes. I couldn't have been more than 2-3 years old.

Another was right after WWII when stores used to give out plastic packages of margarine with a yellow dye capsule inside. You'd have to squeeze and knead it to mix it up to become yellow. I was squeezing it one day, and t broke-- oozing margarine all over the place.

Funny what sticks with us...
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now you see that's taught me something today,...your memory... has taught me that about the ww2 margarine, which I had no idea had yellow dye inside... wow!(y)
 
one of my early memories, which mom mentioned the other day was when I was very young, she was unloading groceries, looked back and saw me climbing the counter. I recall her saying my name, like "I'm about to get in trouble" way, and I fell off the counter, on my back on top of a carrier of Pepsi, that they used to sell 6 16oz. returnable bottles in. My mom froze, scared obviously, she didn't know whether to pick me up or let me get up, fearing serious injury. And definitely freaked my silly little butt out.
 
I didn't like lettuce and tomatoes when I was a young child. In pre-school, a woman who worked there told me I was going to clean my plate, or she would have to help me. I ate the meat and mashed potatoes, but left the lettuce and tomato salad, so she put me in her lap and used her fingers to push them down my throat. Not just that day, but again on other days. I told my mother, and she went to the pre-school for a visit, then promptly took me out of there.

Because of that experience, I never liked lettuce and tomatoes. I always ordered a hamburger without them. One day, when I was in my mid 30s, I had been out shopping and I was starving, being way past lunch time. I stopped in at a fast food place and bought a hamburger, without thinking to tell them not to put lettuce and tomatoes. I was so hungry, I just ate it anyway, and it tasted so good, that I never ordered a plain burger again.
 
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palides2021 said:
I remember when I was around 5. My mom took me to school. We had just arrived to the US a few months earlier, and it was the first day of kindergarten. She had to leave me in the line with the other kids. When I realized she was leaving, I started crying. Then the kids all around me bawled also.
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that's funny you should say that, Palides..beccause I had the exact oppsoite reaction on my first day at school, probably in retrospect because I'd been sent to a couple of different foster homes by then.. so when my mother took me to school on my first day, I remember it was raining and we kids all had little plastic coats and sou'westers' on.. and with our mothers we had to sit on a bench in a hallway..for our names to be called it had been army barracks during the war so it was fairly grim... and every child was screeching.. and I was the only one not crying.. I think I had just learned by that young age to accept whatever was coming my way next !
 
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Grandpa had an avocado tree in the back and was waiting for this huge one to get ripe, he picked it and set it on the kitchen table and left the room. Well I loved avocado and I peeled it back on top and took a big bite and set it back.
He got back to the room and saw it "What happened here to MY avocado?" I got so scared I told him I saw a big cockroach on the table jump up there and eat it. He took out a knife and cut it, put in front of me "Well if that cockroach wants it that bad , that cockroach will eat it all"
I never lied to him again and he let me stop eating it when I broke down and told him the truth. I was about 2
 
Another memory was when I was about 4 years old.. we lived in the ground floor of an apartment block...

I had few toys, so when I spotted an old abandoned dolls pram in the close (foyer).. of our block, I immediately went to play with it and raised the hood, and pushed the metal mechanism to keep the hood of the pram up. The hinge was rusty and immediately ensnared the palm of my hand... My screams brought my father running from the house, and I clearly remember thinking that I was never going to be freed from this and asking him if I'd have to go to bed with it...lol.....

...I was reminded of this periodically throughout my whole childhood
 
My first memory is from when I was probably 4 years old. We used to visit my two older male cousins. I was running down their driveway chasing them and fell head first. I had a pebble from their driveway lodged in my forehead and had to go to the hospital. It took years for the scar to go away. Sorry it isn't more pleasant but it sure made an impact.
 
Taking baths in a galvanized tub in the kitchen in front of the open oven door. It was the warmest place in the house.

I can remember a train trip I took with my mother when I was two. I can remember what I was wearing. It was an overnight trip and the conductor gave me a little white pillow. I kept dropping it on the floor and my mother kept threatening to take it away from me.

When I was two, my parents built a little house and I DO mean little. There was only one small bedroom and my crib was so close to their bed, I remember that when I woke up in the night, I could reach through the bars and hold my mom's nightgown sleeve until I went back to sleep.
 
When I had just started school.. I was playing on top of a set of stairs, and fell off the wall face planting on the concrete, which knocked my teeth out.
The school sent for my mother, but I was crying a lot and there was a lot of blood.. and I have this ever abiding memory of a teacher trying to feed me jelly beans...... and it's not a false memory, she really was trying to feed me jelly beans after busting my mouth open on the concrete ..

this was the school, and the wall at the top of the stairs was where I face planted from...

rainbow-school.jpg
 
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When I was born we lived in a city apartment building, we moved when I was three years old but I have some snap shot memories of when we lived there.

Playing on the fire escape.
The church across the street.
A fireman asking if a burned up toy was mine, I remember that and a car burning.
The neighbor lady after her leg was amputated.
Riding in a police car (I wandered away from home).

And I swear I can remember sitting on a pile of stuff in the backseat of my dad's car looking out the back window as we drove away the day we moved.
 
Searching and calling for my lost kitty, Buffy. Never found her. Prior to age 4.
Against my mother's advice, I took a miniature china tea set to school (kindergarten, age 4). She had warned me and sure enough, I dropped a piece of it and it broke.
Looking for a particular winter hat, the kind with ear muffs attached. It belonged to my brother but it was cold outside and I wanted to wear it. It was supposed to be on the top shelf in the hall closet. I couldn't reach up there. Age ?.
 
hollydolly said:
When I had just started school.. I was playing on top of a set of stairs, and fell off the wall face planting on the concrete, which knocked my teeth out.
The school sent for my mother, but I was crying a lot and there was a lot of blood.. and I have this ever abiding memory of a teacher trying to feed me jelly beans...... and it's not a false memory, she really was trying to feed me jelly beans after busting my mouth open on the concrete ..

this was the school, and the wall at the top of the stairs was where I face planted from...

rainbow-school.jpg
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Sorry to hear that Hollydolly... I've had the same thing happen twice in my grade school years. I've had multiple repairs on my front teeth from it.

First was third grade, I was running down the main aisle with a friend going out to recess, all I know is when I tried to go down the concrete outside steps, I fell face first.

Second time, I was playing a game popular with the boys in sixth grade called murderball, whoever had the ball got pummeled. I know, sounds awesome, right? I was running, I saw a leg stick out to trip me (never knew who...) and face down I went. Broke them out again.

Then in 1994 I got into an accident on the highway, it slammed my front teeth into the steering wheel. And yes, they got broke again.

It seems my teeth are always in the way. :sneaky::rolleyes:
 
A lot of front teeth got knocked out on the "bubblers" at our school. The bubbler was a drinking fountain that had a porcelain ball in a basin that water bubbled up out of a couple of inches.

You put you head down to suck up some water without touching the ball and one of the bullies would hit the back of your head, causing your teeth to hit the ball. Chipped teeth or knocked out completely. A fat lip was the minimum damage.

I was in constant terror of that happening and wouldn't take a drink unless there was no one around or a friend was watching out.
 
4th grade, loved Tetherball and what we called Wall Ball. Used to play daily at the park on the corner. One boy named Tony was about at my level so we would often battle it out on either court. One day taking a break sitting under the tree he kissed me on the cheek, I slugged him so fast right back I shocked myself. He never kissed me again but we kept playing on the courts.
 
David777 said:
As a curious tyke, crawling under some living room furniture, where on the carpeted floor I found some metal pin maybe a hair pin. I still recall unwisely sticking the pin into an 110vac electrical socket. The first and last time I ever did so that my brain recorded very well. o_O
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not sure if I am glad or not that you didn't stick it in your nose after you doing that. The nose would have been most kids thought.
 

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