A poll: Your earliest memory

[Michael B. Ross]

I have a granddaughter who is almost three. She is approaching the age when most people form their earliest memory.

My earliest memory is of my climbing into a truck full of our family’s goods and sitting between my father and older brother. My father had been hired by the Post Office in Indianapolis and no longer would have to work in the coal mines of southern Indiana.

Why is that my earliest memory? I think it was the emotions of the moment. I sensed in my family and myself the feelings of excitement and adventure. At the age of four, I knew life was changing, but I felt secure sitting between two strong men as we drove from the empty house that had been our home.

I wonder if earliest memories are important. Do they help shape one’s future? Can first memories impact emotional and mental health? I don’t know, but I often think about it when I am with my granddaughter. I try to give her pleasant experiences that include my showing her she is loved and safe.

I thought I would do a poll. Which of the following BEST describe the emotions of your earliest memory? You may check more than one.

If you have time, I would enjoy reading a post about your earliest memory. Where were you? What was happening? How old were you?

[Doris Grant]

My earliest memory if of my mom walking in the door with my new little sister. I was five years old. I remember my aunt being there, I now know she stayed with us while mom was in the hospital.

Doris

[Cindi Hammons]

My earliest memory was when I was around a year old. My mom was in the hospital and my grandma had come to stay with me and my brother while my dad worked. I remember standing in the kitchen doorway (holding on to the wall) and looking at my grandma sitting on the couch.

Mom says that I learned to walk while she was in the hospital. Maybe that is why I remember that scene...because I was holding on to the wall getting ready to let go. Maybe? I also remember (not long after that or near the same time) holding on to the raised porch edge and walking up and down our sidewalk that lead to the front door.

[Mark Doble]

1.) When I was 3 I helped my grandpa change a tire on his car. Those old bumper jacks were amazing to me. He made me wear a hard hat too.

2.) I use to ride my tricycle two blocks up to the Golden Mile shopping center in Scarborough while my Dad jogged.

[Jim Franklin]

When I was almost 3 and we were moving from Baker, OR to South Dakota we stopped at Rushmore Memorial and I named of the Presidents. Was I supposed to be a History teacher?

[Barb Bouldrey]

I remember the kitchen of the house we lived in when I was 2. I remember the red kitchen booth. I remember my father giving me beer in a 7 Up bottle and laughing when I spit it out.

I remember the next house we lived in, out in the country. We lived in the back half of the farm house. The owner, an elderly lady, had an enclosed porch with sun chatchers filling every window. I remember the sensation of all the colors in that room. My mother had to tell me in later years that the color was caused by suncatchers. That lady always gave us a piece of candy when we visited her.

I remember going fishing with my father when I 3, and my brother dropping a rock on my thumb cause the nail to turn black and fall off.

When Stephen was one month past age 2, his great-grandfather died and a month later his grandfather died. When he was 2 year and 4 months old we went back to Ohio to check on John's mother and visit the two cemeteries. Stephen just played around in each cemetery.

When I put him to bed that night, at grandma's, he asked me, "Why did Grandma's daddy die?" And we talked about it. Then he asked me, "Why did Daddy's daddy die?" And we talked about it. Then he asked me, with tears running down his face, "Is my daddy going to die?"

OH, Man! That blew my mind. I did not think he was old enough to grasp all that had happened. I called John into the room and said, "John, get in bed with your son until he goes to sleep. He needs his daddy." And we reassured Stephen that his daddy was not going to die any time soon. PHEW!

Your list should include the word "contentment." Maybe the word "family."

Barb

[Joel Merrill]

I have many memories of when I was three. Nothing real exciting, just life. I put down joy but happiness or peacefulness would better describe how I felt. Life was simple then. I had no cares, no problems, no responsibilities.

Joel

[Wilson L. Deaton]

Emotions? What are those? Shouldn't this be on the W2W forum? :basic05

Wilson

[Barb Bouldrey]

OOoooooooohhhhhhh, Wilson, your are treading on dangerous ground.

LOL

BB

[Wilson L. Deaton]

you are treading on dangerous ground.

"And loving it," as one of my heroes (Maxwell Smart) would say.

Wilson

[Judy Hamilton]

We lived in the country east of a sidewalk town in West Texas.(Crosbyton Texas) My dad was in the Pacific in WWII, so have no early memories of him. ..Our home did not have indoor bathroom. Can remember taking a bath in a metal tub in the kitchen, remember the "honey bucket" we used in the night time


remember my mother killing rattle snakes with a hoe

remember when the gate around our place was left unfastened and the cows meandering in the front yard

remember getting lost between the barn and
the house during a dust storm

the snakes, huge cows (to a little one) and the dust storms were frightening to me as a wee child...these memories were made before age two as my dad returned from WWII in 1945
I was two ...2 1/2 years old

Judy

[Anne and Dwayne Hood]

Well, I am not sure how old I was--but I was very young --a few years before I began going to school. I remember daddy planting peanuts in our back yard--maneuvers in the woods, a soldier coming on a bus and checking for Germans, when Roosevelt died--nearer to school age then.
Two men stood outside my sister's window plotting how to find tires. There was a garage between our house and the next. She jumped out of bed and ran to our parent's room.
I remember when I was a little older how we had to have ration stamps during the war for gas, sugar, shoes, etc.
We never had an "outside path" when I was old enough to remember it. But, yes Judy-I remember the big aluminum tubs that we took our baths in.
Oh yeh! I remember the blackouts and camouflage curtains on the windows. My parents had a little fire going in the fireplace, and someone knocked on our door, and said, "Spit on the fire." You had more than one fireplaces in different rooms back then, and we also had a wwod stove and oil stove in the kitchen.
I have being told that I turned the knob on Mother's gas stove. She was trying to see how much she could saved with the pilot out. It blew up in her face and singed her eyebrows when she lit it. she was soon going to district assembly, when the Sc and Ga. districts were combined. Daddy's sisters that were twins were to keep us. so, mother changed to an oil stove before she left. Later, she started taking me to assemblies with her. Even if I did not need it, she would put a diaper on me, for fear of what I might do to the matress, of the house where we stayed. I was preschool, and back then, we stayed in houses of the church members in the town whee the assembly.
Mother would let me go out during the assembly and I would pick up pecans in the yard. A neighbor scolded me. Mother would entertain me with pennies, and I would drop them in the knot holes in the floor. So, how in the world old, would I have been, when i did not know any better than to do that.Hope you enjoyed my epistle, and will make so funny comments. Ha
No, I am not as old as Methuselum, but I will be 68 Saturday.

[Thomas Cook]

My earliest memories are of the happy times I had when you and Aunt Dianne Baby sat me when you were first married and I was a young child
Tom

[John Kennedy]

My first memories are of our house in Rossville, GA, when my parents pastored there in the early 40's. As I remember it was on a hill several blocks away from the church. I can also remember being chased by a rooster at one of the member's houses out in the country. That undoubtedly accounts for my strong aversion to chicken (unless it's fried).

[Michael B. Ross]

Well, well. Look who came out of hiding. Ole' Tom Cook. Where have you been? You probably have been busy having your green suit cleaned and ironed. Oh, I forgot. You NEVER had your green suit cleaned OR ironed.

Seriously, good to hear from you. And, might I remind you: you are older than both me and Aunt Dianne (and it's Diana).

My earliest memories are of the happy times I had when you and Aunt Dianne Baby sat me when you were first married and I was a young child
Tom

[David Cash]

I can't vote, because I'm not sure which memory is my actual earliest. I have a few small memories from when I was about two or maybe just turned three in Alaska. They're mostly just little pictures, and some of them I may have kind of reinvented as an airplane-obsessed teenager. (Or maybe my obsession brought certain picture back more clearly.

One of my very earliest memories involves the night the northern Alasakan village my father taught in received a tsunami (or tital wave as they called them then) warning and everybody evacuated to a house on the hill. I don't remember fear, but of riding on a hand pushed sled with my younger sister. One of us fell off in the snow and had to be picked back up. There's also kind of a vague memory of people sitting inside a house and listening to a radio, probably with the official word on the tsunami.

The airplane inspired memories include watching a guy hand prop a bush plane from a house window, (Actually as a little kid, I thought he stopped rather than started the propellor!) squirming in the back seat of the bush plane we left the community of my early memories in, crawling into the front seat (from the back) of another bush plane to sit on my father's lap, and maybe riding in an airliner when my family came out for vacation.

I also remember the nightmares that frightened me as a small child until I started praying I wouldn't have any.

Think I'll go ahead and vote, just how to figure out how to do it.

David Cash

[Beth Larpenter-Shurbutt]

My first memory was when I was 3 years and 1 month old. My Uncle took me to the hospital to see my new little baby brother. I remember him holding me up to the nursery window and asking me, "Which one do you want?"

Two months later I remember terror when the stationwagon, our family was traveling in, hit a culvert and rolled three times, breaking my neck and seriously injuring the rest of my family.

My good memories out number the not-so-good memories, though!

Beth

[Anne and Dwayne Hood]

Tom and Michael, I remember things about both of you, and Diana, that none of the three of you will remember or have any idea what it is...or how I know. Diana might if she really "racks her brain" real good.
But, Tom--all you have to do is attend a meeting where Fred Huff is speaking to learn about all anyone would ever want to know about you.
We were seldom around you "kids" when Dwayne and I were at Trevecca, but it does not take long to feel like I know you, if I am just around a person that did know you.

[Gord Evans]

1.) When I was 3 I helped my grandpa change a tire on his car. Those old bumper jacks were amazing to me. He made me wear a hard hat too.

2.) I use to ride my tricycle two blocks up to the Golden Mile shopping center in Scarborough while my Dad jogged.

Once a biker, Mark, always a biker!

:basic05

[Hans Deventer]

I'm really don't have a clue about the date of most of my earliest memories. My first 6.5 years we lived on the 6th floor of a 10 floor apartment building in Rotterdam. I have several memories of those days but I don't know at what age.
One of the few I can assign a date to is when I was 4 and we went to France and Italy on vacation. We arrived at a camping site in Italy near the Mediterranean See. It was situated on a hill. My task when we arrived at a camping site and my parents started putting up the tent was to find the toilets and the places to shower and wash. So I did. Then at one point, my mother and aunt asked me to show them the way to the toilets, and I did and went back to the tent immediately. They however, upon trying to get back as well, got lost on the camping site. Afterwards they asked me how I knew the way. I told them I had followed a water pipe that was above the ground, presuming it would lead me to the toilets. They, when following me, did not notice and just followed me.

[Brad Mercer]

My first memory happened when I was two years old. My mother was hanging clothes on the line and I was beating ant beds with a stick until they got all over me and started stinging me. My mother gave me a bath in the sink and then rubbed me down with alcohol and changed my clothes on her bed. I remember everything about the yard, the house and the events surrounding that moment, and basically have a fairly clear recollection of my life from then on. I guess it woke my brain up.

By my third birthday I guess my personality was pretty much set. My parents got me on a local children's TV show for my third birthday. It was one of those where they show cartoons and in between cartoons the host visits with the children sitting in a little section of bleachers in the studio. It was called Popeye's Party. I was so disappointed that we didn't get to see Popeye in person. And when the hostess started asking me questions, she finally had to break to a commercial because she couldn't get me to stop talking. I figured because she was on TV she had special powers and I explained to her about my little peddle car that had rusted out and wouldn't pedal anymore, in the hope that she could get it fixed. She couldn't.

Brad

[Diane Likens]

I chose "joy", "surprise" and "fear".

I must have been about 3 or 4. We were in Germany because Dad was stationed there. I'd pinched my little finger in a door, crushing it pretty badly. Dad took me to the doctor and I remember a young man with red hair dressed in white -- he whispered in my ear that he had TWO lollipops for me when I was done. I left the doctor's office with a big bandage on my pinky and a pocktful of lollipops. My mother was at home when we got back and I remember her speaking profanely to my dad asking where in the >>>> he'd been. Then I remember her squatting down to talk to me, cooing like I was a baby. I remember feeling afraid of her, like I didn't know exactly who she was, and I remember that her breath smelled just awful (I now know that she was quite the drinker then).

Then sometime later -- maybe a year or so -- we were in Texas. Dad had an old Dodge pickup truck and when he was home, we children weren't allowed to go near it. I remember I was sitting on our front porch by myself and Daddy pulled into the driveway in his truck. I thought he looked so handsome with his tie on. I remember him whistling as he dropped his keys into his pocket and practically floated to the steps of the porch. He held his arms out in front of him and I jumped off the top step into his arms. He was laughing and twirling and dancing me around and around until I got dizzy. He carried me to his truck and PUT ME IN ITS BED! I felt like a princess in the back of that truck -- I was SPECIAL!

Oh, how I miss my Dad!

[Michael B. Ross]

I see where this is going, Anne. How much? However, you need to know that blackmail is against the law.

Tom and Michael, I remember things about both of you, and Diana, that none of the three of you will remember or have any idea what it is...or how I know. Diana might if she really "racks her brain" real good.
But, Tom--all you have to do is attend a meeting where Fred Huff is speaking to learn about all anyone would ever want to know about you.
We were seldom around you "kids" when Dwayne and I were at Trevecca, but it does not take long to feel like I know you, if I am just around a person that did know you.

[Vivian Cornwell]

We lived in the city until I was two. Then we moved to the edge of town but it was more like the country. The first memory I have is walking around our yard at night and there was a cat, a dog, and there were chickens running around and that was a little scary to me since I wasn't used to all of those animals.

My second memory is when my grandmother died. In those days they put a net over the casket to keep flies away. There was no air conditioning so it could get very warm in the funeral home. I went up to the casket and tried to touch my grandmother and I remember being taken away and told I couldn't touch her. I thought she was just asleep and couldn't understand why I couldn't touch her. That made a deep impression on me.