What are some of your earliest memories ?

I dont have a lot of bad memories like some. If I think about it I guess my worst one involves my father.
My Mom married a much older man to escape her home life. He was very abusive.
He beat her and caused her to lose my older sister. He would burn me with cigarettes and switch me if I cried.
Thankfully she managed the courage to divorce him. I think I was around three. I only remember bits.

After that we lived in boarding houses and rented rooms.
At the time I considered it an adventure. I met a lot of very interesting people.
I realize now that there were some shady characters and drunks but they were all nice to me.
 

Veronica said:
I dont have a lot of bad memories like some. If I think about it I guess my worst one involves my father.
My Mom married a much older man to escape her home life. He was very abusive.
He beat her and caused her to lose my older sister. He would burn me with cigarettes and switch me if I cried.
Thankfully she managed the courage to divorce him. I think I was around three. I only remember bits.

After that we lived in boarding houses and rented rooms.
At the time I considered it an adventure. I met a lot of very interesting people.
I realize now that there were some shady characters and drunks but they were all nice to me.
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So glad it turned out better once she left. It does take a lot of courage to leave that environment, Kudos and Cheers to your Mom. 🥰
 
Veronica said:
I dont have a lot of bad memories like some. If I think about it I guess my worst one involves my father.
My Mom married a much older man to escape her home life. He was very abusive.
He beat her and caused her to lose my older sister. He would burn me with cigarettes and switch me if I cried.
Thankfully she managed the courage to divorce him. I think I was around three. I only remember bits.

After that we lived in boarding houses and rented rooms.
At the time I considered it an adventure. I met a lot of very interesting people.
I realize now that there were some shady characters and drunks but they were all nice to me.
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thank god you got out of there while you were still a toddler..
 

Before 6 yo, I have only vague, shadowy pictures of the Bronx apartment we lived in. And playing with my brother and sister, and being forced to sit at table until I ate every single pea on my plate. And a few incidents, like the escalator that went from the subway up to Macy's, which was so narrow, I was terrified and crying and my mother impatiently yanked me onto it. And walking to school with my mother. And a mean teacher in 1st grade.
 
hollydolly said:
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)
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I didn't realize until recently that in the early 20th Century the butter manufacturers had gotten legislation passed that prohibited margarine companies from coloring their product yellow, but the consumer could color it yellow after purchase. And that legislation wasn't repealed until the mid 1950s!
 
Maybe something else will surface for me. But three I remember are these...

Hearing music on the radio. And, when I was still quite young (maybe 4 years or so), studying the grain in the polished-wood flooring in the house I lived in from age 10 months. Also, walking along with my mother who was wheeling my 3-year-younger brother around in a stroller.
 
We lived in an apartment until I was 5 and I have a bunch of memories from there.
Then my dad built a house on a VA loan.
At the new house, I remember having to jump up to reach the normal wall switch for bedroom lighting.
Thankfully I soon outgrew the jumping up to hit the switch and remember being happy I could simple reach the wall switch.
Was never a problem at the apartment. My bedroom was well lit and likely I was in bed when it got dark anyway, or soon after.
 
I lived part time in many rented rooms. One was in an old building downtown. Everything was in one room.
There was no kitchen just a hot plate. I remember swinging down on the fire escape ladders. Its a wonder Im still alive.
There was one bathroom for the whole floor. I have no idea why but the toilet filled with hot water so it was always warm.
And there was a small gas heater behind the clawfoot tub so you didnt want to lean back till it filled and the water absorbed the heat.
There was an older man in a wheelchair who used to give me rides.

Another place was a single room on the third floor of an old house. The lady rented all the rooms on the second and third floors.
It was there that I got my first trip to the emergency room. Mom and I had ate grapefruit and cheese for weeks.
That was all we had at the time. That was fine for an adult, but I developed severe stomach cramps from constipation.
And poor Mom was scolded by the doctor. When I got older I used to tease her and say she tried to kill me off. :D

Sometimes I would stay with relatives in the suburbs and Mom would stay behind in the rooms. In the summers sometimes I would stay with my Great Grandparents in the country. Neither had indoor plumbing. I didnt think anything about it since I was used to it.

After Mom married my first stepfather we lived in a small house with a yard. New adventures. I discovered bugs and climbing trees.
And we got a cat and a dog. :D That didnt last long before they got divorced. I was young so Im not sure why.
 
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I can remember as far back as 1946 and I, my mother and sister were on a cargo ship bound for Australia. We were crossing the Equator, and it was the custom for the ship's crew to dress up and throw passengers into the swimming pool. When they came around to get our mother we screamed and screamed, and they let her go. We were terrified and my mother was glad because she couldn't swim.
I also remember I put a Naphthalene ball up my nose and it was burning and my mother said to "Blow my nose " and it came flying out. Also, at school when I was 6 someone dared me to put a small bead up my nose, and they had to get the ambulance to get it out. Luckily the was a small hole in it and they could get it out. I could go on for more and I'll stop here for now.
 
My earliest snapshot memories involve my crib-- Dad taking it apart when i was just over year and later the 'bars' turning up in the narrow just above high tide level dock we had. No thoughts or feelings about either, just the image.

Something of slide show rather than video like memory from sometime in my second year-- confrontation with a water moccasin, sister going for Mom, who shot the head off the thing.

That house on the inlet was 4 ft off the ground but i remember riding out one hurricane in it with water lapping at the floorboards and all our dogs (mostly hunting breeds) and couple of cats huddled in the living room with us. Our Bloodhound giving birth in front of fireplace.

A lot of other memories harder to place in time, until after we moved to river sometime in my 4th year. Partly because they were common activities: walking in woods as a family with Dad instructing us on how to avoid startling animals. Swimming, watching Mama throw a cast net. Playing with Buffy, our house dog. My protector-- if i got too close to places i wasn't supposed go without human supervision (the inlet, woods, marsh or the little wood bridge on the long dirt driveway out to roads leading to rest of town) she'd herd me back to center of large front yard.
 
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I was 10 yrs old, my parents sent me to a co-ed boarding school in Deerfield, Mass,500 miles away from home
I'm not quite sure why ,I know I had difficulty with school work, I had to repeat 4th grade at our elementary school I had the same teacher.
This trend continued when I was 13 sent to a girl's boarding school in Toronto for 2 yrs in late 60's. I hated the school to get my parent's attention, I purposely got in with the wrong crowd, got expelled.I was happy, my parents were not pleased. The last stop was living with my aunt&uncle in Baltimore, MD, for my freshman& soph yrs, I had to repeat my freshman yr I finally had enough, threatened my parents, it worked
As for my older sister& younger brother,I was very jealous,they got to stay home
It took me yrs to forgive my parents,I was gone from ages 10-16,don;'t know what a normal childhood was like during those yrs
 
oscash said:
I can remember as far back as 1946 and I, my mother and sister were on a cargo ship bound for Australia. We were crossing the Equator, and it was the custom for the ship's crew to dress up and throw passengers into the swimming pool. When they came around to get our mother we screamed and screamed, and they let her go. We were terrified and my mother was glad because she couldn't swim.
I also remember I put a Naphthalene ball up my nose and it was burning and my mother said to "Blow my nose " and it came flying out. Also, at school when I was 6 someone dared me to put a small bead up my nose, and they had to get the ambulance to get it out. Luckily the was a small hole in it and they could get it out. I could go on for more and I'll stop here for now.
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how can you remember 1946 when you're only 28 ? :sneaky::love:
 
As a child my family moved frequently with Dad's job in construction. There wasn't a moving van we traveled with all our belongings and towed the house trailer we called home. We stopped once at a road side park to eat some lunch (we called it dinner). After eating it was back on the road moving on. I was about four and they didn't notice I had been left behind until they were several miles down the road. They came back for me and I was playing with some toy cars in the dirt. Today they would be arrested back then I just got a few homemade cookies and a hug.
 
remember these...

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Babs2u said:
I remember that margarine. The dye was a dark orange before it was kneaded throughout the package.
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Oh lordy, this brings a memory up to the front,,,,when I was
a kid and we'd get that white margerine with the dye tabs
we'd fight to get it mixed, well one time my Dad had an idea
to save time, he put a few sticks/bags whatever in the mixing bowl,
then turned on the mixer and oh what a mess, orange and white all over the room, including the ceiling!! Mom was so
mad I don't remember seeing her that pissed....it was another year of splotched wallpaper before they re-papered everything over.!!! Fun stuff @!!!!
 
I just posted in the new thread, "How Many Bad Falls in Your Life" my memory of being 10 yrs old and falling down a flight of stairs onto a metal tool box in a friend's place. My blood was all over my younger brother, who went home with my friend, who told my mother my eye had fallen out. It hadn't, but it was a fairly traumatic incident involving many stitches and weeks of pain. And my mother just loved telling everyone how my younger brother showed up covered in blood and my friend said, "Marcy's eye fell out."
 
hollydolly said:
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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What a pleasant memory and what a kind lady.
 
When l was a young girl about three years old l lived in my great grandmother's apartment in an apartment building
in Vienna, Austria, along with my mother. My dad was U.S. ARMY and lived on the Army base barracks.

One day l was walking down the staircase from our second floor apartment when there was a little boy a little older
than me wearing a mask. l don't know where he went to but l'll never forget him. His memory for me has stuck
with me all these years of my life.

There was a meaning to that boy which I am yet to learn but l just know l will.
 

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