I've got a lot of memories from around three or four, cutting the front of my bottom lip off with scissors, racing around in my pedal car, falling into a pool and apparently bobbing straight back up and treading water. I also distinctly remember both The Wombles, Star Wars and the animated animal version of Robin Hood from the same time period. I watched that Robin Hood so many times that the video tape burnt out.
I remember waking up in my crib, while still in diapers, and escaping over the edge. I was on the second floor of our house, and I walked to the edge of the stairs where the baby gate was. That's as far as that memory goes. I do remember it pretty distinctly because as I was going over the edge of the crib, the plastic edge gripped my skin and it hurt.
My earliest memory is laying in my baby carriage looking up at a crystal clear blue sky. I have no idea how old I was maybe 1, maybe a little younger. I remember laying there just being. My next earliest memory is sitting in my high chair, refusing to eat oatmeal and my mother wondering why suddenly I stopped liking it. I have a lot of others, but those are the earliest.
My earliest memory is climbing out of my crib, at about 2 years old. I got as far as my mom's room, where I smelled weed for the first time. My mom would later be a fucking Jesus freak and consider weed (and me) an abomination, but she used to be cool for an idiot. My next strong memory is of her getting knocked around by her husband. Of course I am fucked up.
To actually answer the question, my first memory was being scared of my father because he was doing a Pee-wee Herman impression, which terrified me. I also remember throwing up in my dad's face on Christmas morning.
I remember my second birthday; I was in the hospital. The older lady who lived next door came to visit me, and I remember getting up one night, alone in the room, and crawling across the crib to play with my busy box. I laid back down, and realized that I didn't know how to get my covers back on; arragh! I soon fell back asleep without them. That's the earliest memory I can put a date on (Elvis really was alive, and would be for another ten days), though to be honest for a while as a kid I thought this memory was from right after I was born. I have a few other memories that might have been slightly before this, perhaps as far back as 18 months old, and that's about as far back as anyone can go. There are two mental developments that a child has to make before retaining memories is possible, though I don't recall exactly what they are. Anyway, 18 months to around the time I turned four is a blur. But the rest of my life, from age four onward, is crystal clear. Don't tell a rainman anything you don't want remembered years down the road, folks, because I will dredge it up when you least expect it. Finally, it's a bit of a relief to read about peoples' memories starting in the two-to-five range. It seems like most people I talk to these days scarcely remember anything prior to high school. I mean, short of a having a shitty childhood that they had to block out, what the fuck? How the hell do you have your entire childhood robbed from you like that? In my case, that would mean losing all of the 80s. The freaking eighties. I'd rather die than have my brain off until 15/1990.
I have two really early memories that my parents are shocked that I remember. The first one is very vague, so it may not count. I remember my mother being pregnant with my brother. I would have just turned two. The only thing I remember about it is that I took a Flintstones Vitamin, at the same time my Mom took other pregnancy vitamins. I also remember hanging out at my grandparents house when mom went to the hospital to have my brother. The other memory I have is flying on an airplane to visit my grandparents in Florida. I was a little older, because I know my brother had been born. I remember how difficult it was to pee on the airplane. I also remember it was a five seat across (3 on one side 2 on the other) configuration which I thought was weird. I guess even kids know symmetry is cool. They took me into the cockpit and gave me little pilot wings too. To this day I have a fascination with airplanes; I blame this memory. I am one of the only people on earth that actually loves flying, and the whole airport experience.
My earliest memory is of the time I had a nightmare when I was 2 years old. I dreamt that a woman who lived a few houses down from my grandmother was actually a witch and she was coming to get me. I woke up terrified, and stood up in my crib looking for my parents. I could see into their bedroom from the room in the apartment where my crib was (I don't remember if it was a second bedroom or some kind of alcove). But they weren't in the bedroom and I freaked out. It turns out that it was a very hot summer night, the apartment had no A/C, and they had put their mattress on the floor in the living room to catch a breeze through the window on that side of the building. Obviously they cma erunnign when I strated screaming. When I was teenager I told them I remembered this, and, while they didn't recall that particular incident, they confirmed the layout of the apartment that i described, and that they did sleep in the living room on hot summer nights.
I also have an early memory of a nightmare. I was about 4 and had a wicked fever and I had a nightmare that there was a fire all around my bed and tiny little firefighters kept trying to save me but couldn't get to me. I woke up, feverish and delirious, went to the bathroom and got a glass of water and threw it on my bed.
I have some really vague memories of my great grandmother and her fried chicken. I must have been two. My first clear memory is seeing my brother in the incubator after he was born when I was three. That nice moment did not at all foreshadow our future relationship or his life.
I remember my first nightmare. A bad man broke into our house and was nailing my family shut into wooden crates. I woke up just as he was about to grab me. My parents didn't have sex for at least a month after that.
I don't want to know how you know this. Focus: I remember a glimpse of the brown-orange shag carpet in the house in Vandalia, IL we lived in before moving to Minnesota. I was 1 1/2 when we moved. My earliest and only nightmares were of being swallowed by a gigantic evil machine.
He slept between them, amigo. I don't remember a thing prior to my fourth birthday party. I recall the cake, the party, the neighborhood kids. The stupid hats. Not one thing before that day. Going against the general grain of this thread, no one was horribly injured.
The sibling posts remind me: I have a small memory of my parents coming home with my new baby brother. My grandma and great-aunt were keeping me while they were in the hospital. I was eating a cracker when my parents walked in. I was a little older than 2.