Not a sound from the pavement

[venta]

This week's stack of library books included Arthur & George. On the train in to work this morning, the first chapter introduced me to both the gentlemen.

One of the things which came up in George's description is that he doesn't have a particular memory that he regards as "his first memory", and had never considered that he ought, or that it was normal, to have such a thing.

I have never been aware of having an earliest memory. I have very, very vague memories of visiting my Nana, who died when I was 3. They are so vague that I wouldn't even really call them memories, more impressions - and even then, I can't be totally sure that they haven't been formed from me being told about her when I was older.

I do wonder that one of my difficulties in pin-pointing an earliest memory is lack of reference points. People often say that they remember being in such-and-such a house, and they know that the family moved from that house when they were two. Or they remember a holiday their parents took them on at a certain age.

We didn't move house when I was a child, and our family holidays were (and still are!) always in the same place. Obviously there were trips to particular places that would come with a date attached, but whenever the mother says "do you remember..." the answer is usually "no", unless it happened much later in life.

I have the fixed points of the deaths of my Nana, and also of my Grandad (when I was 6). I have reasonably clear memories of Grandad, so I certainly have memories from before the age of 6 1/2. Most other things which can be pinned to a time - playgroup, starting school etc belong in the vague-impression category. Perhaps when people talk about their earliest memories, they also are relating only a vague sense of an event rather than what I might now call a memory of something.

Do you have an earliest memory? If so, how old were you when it was formed? How can you be sure it's the earliest?

Comments

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

My earliest memory is of jumping up and down on the sofa claiming that I was Peter Pan and could fly. And it's a proper memory, rather than a vague impression. I don't know how old I was, but I was still in nappies, so I'm thinking 'toddler' :)

I do also have something more in the vague-impression category, which may have been from about the same age or from a little younger.

It's particularly striking in that I don't have any other 'proper' memories until rather later. Then again, I don't tend to remember personal life events very well; at any given time, most of my life up to the last two years is a set of fragmented images, not well connected or chronologically arranged.

Facts, on the other hand, I tend to keep :)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

...I should also like to add that in the lamplight the withered leaves collect at my feet, and collect my kudo :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

You may have your kudo :)

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

Which I will refrain from claiming now, since someone else got there first, although I shall feel slightly worried that I have a notional 2 out of 2 for your past two entries...

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Ooh, ooh, and another early memory of being strapped into a pushchair, by the front door waiting to go out, while my mother nipped back into the house for something; and there was an earwig crawling up the pushchair towards my face.

...I don't like earwigs much.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I have impressionistic 'memories' of Christmas Day 1973, when I would have been 19m old. I have a clear memory of the morning of my second birthday, 5 months later. We suspect this was because there was an Incident of Indignation and Rage (high emotion tends to make good memories). Big Paul* stole my Donald Duck birthday card and ran away and I had to chase him round the garden for ages to get it back!!! I was Not Happy and kicked him after I caught him.

My regular memories start some time around 3y3m, but I've lost huge chunks of later years.



* Next-door-neighbour. Younger/smaller than me, but bigger/older than Little Paul, who lived the other side of us.

[venta.livejournal.com]

There was a time, not long after I started working, when I was cramming too much into my life and not sleeping enough. I felt like I was coping at the time, but it seems like the thing that went out of the window was proper memory-formation.

It's quite disturbing to hear a group of people reminiscing happily about things that happened and to think "well, I *know* I was there..."

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Ooh, interesting. Because I don't think I've had enough sleep for longer than a week at a time since primary school. Which may explain something about my broken memories.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I've no idea how solid the science behind this is. But anecdotally it makes a big difference to me (over a long period of time, rather than, say, a couple of late nights and I lose a day).

I've always imagined deep sleep as a time when memories are sorted, catalogued and filed. And, if that doesn't happen, they just get mislaid down the backs of shelves and under sofas.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I've a vague recollection that there's some evidence for that idea.

Which makes it suck even more to be a chronic night owl in today's society. Not that I'm bitter about losing the best years of my life to constant tiredness or anything :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Surely better than being a night owl in a pre-electricity society ;)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

There is that :) Whose stupid idea was this anyway...

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

The memories I've lost are partly lack of sleep, partly *cough* substances *cough*, and partly a result of brain injuries. I'm not good at making new memories now, either, through a combination of sleep issues and medication. The memories I do have from the last ~15 years, however, are very very clear - almost 'lucid dreaming' in quality.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

I just about remember moving house when I was 4, to where my parents still live. I can't remember living anywhere else, even leaving the previous place, just arriving.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I have an official "earliest memory", but I found out more recently that it's actually not accurate! (It's a very visual memory, but the carpet I remember in the scene wasn't there until years later.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I wonder how many of my very early memories aren't accuarate at all. One of my memories of my Nana's house looks suspiciously (in form, though not in furnishing) like the living room in the house of my first piano teacher's parents.

[timeplease.livejournal.com]

The earliest memory I can date is the birth of my sister. This happened at home; I was sent outside to play in the sandpit with my uncle Dave. I was just under two-and-a-half.

I have another early memory - being driven to a christmas party through some really heavy rain - but I can't say whether it was earlier or later.

[snathe.livejournal.com]

My two earliest memories I can't put an absolute date on, but I know the dates between when they happened and the order in which they did so. The first one took place sometime between Christmas 1979 and April 16th 1981 - me running across the front garden of the second house we lived in after I was born, having been scared by the chimes of the grandfather clock in our next door neighbour's house. We were definitely in that particular house by Christmas 1979 and I can very accurately pinpoint the end date for the range of that memory because we emigrated to America on that day, thanks to finding some old paperwork at my parents house a few years ago (namely some old post addressed to that house, postmarked Dec 1979, and my Mum's old passport with a US immigration Visa stamp, dated April 16th 1981.) The second memory happened sometime between April 16th 1981 and October 2nd 1982, which are the dates between when we lived in America. Again, this involves me being scared and running away from something - this time a rather large spider on the back garden gate of the house we lived in over there. I seem to recall it was summer when this happened, but I really can't remember if it was the summer of '81 or '82. Interesting that my two earliest memories involve being scared by something, though!

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Freud would have a field day :)

Lots of people do seem to have earliest memories associated with some strong emotion, though, and I guess kids do spend quite a lot of time being scared of things!

[ceb.livejournal.com]

Aaaaaaa people collision, how do you two know each other? :-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

That would be snow_leopard's fault :)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Ooh I have a few. I remember having a tantrum in the library car park and being SO ANGRY. I remember further down the same bit of pavement the exact spot where I said something rude to Brown Owl and got a lifetime ban from joining any uniformed youth group but not what it was I said. I remember lying on the floor at playgroup having fallen off the slide and hit my head, looking up at the picture of the queen on the wall, and Mrs Darvill (who I presume is now dead) shouting at me to get up and stop snivelling, and I remember having a dream of climbing up a climbing frame at playgroup and getting stuck in a dip on the top of it and rolling from side to side not being able to get off, and being scared to climb it the next day. Those must have happened when I was about 3. I also vaguely remember falling backwards into a bucket of cold water while my dad was washing the car and my parents laughing at me, and I remember stepping out into the snow for the first time in a red playsuit and crapping myself in surprise, so I was probably two-ish.

All of these sensory and emotional things are quite brief but quite detailed. So I remember the smell of playgroup and the sensation of cold water and exactly where in the room I was standing and what the floor felt like but not what anybody's faces looked like or the words they said.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I do have a memory of lying on the floor in my parents' hallway having a tantrum and my parents (whose approach to tantrums was to demonstrate their futility by ignoring them[*]) walking backwards and forwards between the dining room and the kitchen and stepping over me.

It's very interesting what you say about being able to remember the sensory and emotional parts, because that's almost exactly the opposite of my memories. I don't remember why I was having a tantrum, or what it felt like, or how I felt about my parents ignoring me, I just remember the fact that it happened. I rarely remember the smell of anything (until, of course, I smell it again) and most of my memories are very low on visual/sensory details.

[*] Except for the tantrum I had at Pickering castle, where they ran away, hid behind a wall, laughed a lot and took photos. Bastards. In their defence, (a) they never showed the photos to my friends and (b) I did give up on tantrums pretty quickly.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

they ran away, hid behind a wall, laughed a lot and took photos. [...] I did give up on tantrums pretty quickly.

Thanks for the parenting tip! :-)

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

Don't remember the one in the hall but at Pickering Castle, we just walked away, you were on a huge grassed area and could come to no harm. We didn't hide, nor did we take your photo - that was of you doing a handstand later.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's the photo I was thinking of (judging from the usual quality of my handstands). I maintain I've been misinformed by my father ;)

[damerell.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how one would sort early memories, indeed, although I know my first memory of politics because it's one of the parents saying "that bloody woman's won" and I have no pre-Thatcher political memories.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I certainly don't remember Thatcher coming to power, though I do remember being aware that there was a war in somewhere very far away called the Falklands.

I do also remember standing in the Town Hall car park and, grasping the idea that years were numbered, asking my parents what year it was (1981).

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I remember chanting 'Margaret Thatcher, milk snatcher!" with my chums in the playground from when she stopped school milk. I can't in all honesty claim it was a particularly considered political position. To be honest I had no idea who Margaret Thatcher was, and I wasn't too upset about the milk anyway - it was often revoltingly warm, sometimes to the point of souring. Possibly because this was before refrigerators ... No no no, hold on, I'm not *that* old ...

I also remember having the obvious arguments about progressive taxation and its effect on high earners with a friend at school around the 1979 election, but in all honesty we were both simply repeating our parents' positions.

The first political opinion I can remember holding on my own account was on the formation of the SDP, which I thought was terribly disloyal, and unlikely to help anyone except the Conservative Party. I now think it was a bit more complicated than that, but it's not bad for a schoolkid.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I remember chanting 'Margaret Thatcher, milk snatcher!"

Ooh, yes! I remember this, too. Though if free milk for over-7s went out 1971 it was old news by the time we were saying it. Do under-7s still get free milk at school? I have no idea.

I also remember having the obvious arguments about progressive taxation and its effect on high earners with a friend at school around the 1979 election

Either you're slightly older than me, or you were alarmingly precocious ;)

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Do under-7s still get free milk at school? I have no idea.

I ought to know this. I think the answer is no. They got milk at nursery, but that was definitely paid for by me. At school, last year, in Reception (age 4 and 5) my older son did get milk, but we had to pay for it. This year (Year 1, age 5 and 6) he's not having to take milk money in every week, and I think that means he's not getting any. I'll have to ask him.

Either you're slightly older than me, or you were alarmingly precocious ;)

Bit of both, I think. :-)

It helped that my parents and my friend's parents both believed strongly in answering questions when children asked them, and we'd both asked about the election. I'm assuming that high rates of taxation for high earners was a major issue in the campaigns in 1979 - otherwise we really were both alarmingly precocious.

I've lost touch with the friend in question, but I heard from my brother the other day that he's now an extremely high-flying barrister. Which didn't surprise me. I also suspect we have swapped positions from the ones we held in 1979 - I'm now very strongly in favour of progressive taxation and wealth redistribution. You do get lefty barristers but it's not the default position.

[triskellian]

I remember being on the sidelines at a rugby match (which presumably my dad was playing in). There was a pushchair, but I don't know if it was my pushchair which I'd got out of to wander around, or if it had my brother (21 months younger than me) in it. There is some family disagreement about exactly when my dad stopped playing rugby, so this one will never be resolved ;-)

I remember remembering being sent somewhere (next door neighbours? grandparents? not sure) when my mum was in hospital having my brother (my dad may have been at work, or with her, I've no idea), but it's faded now.

I remember playing on a landing with bannisters, which feels in the memory as if it's my home, but isn't the house we moved to just before my fourth birthday, or any other house I have later recollections of.

...So the only one of those which is definitely dateable is the one I don't strictly remember any more. The clearest early memory which I can definitely date is rather later than any of those: the aforementioned house move; I remember my mum's car pulling onto the drive, I remember my brother and me running around the circular route between three rooms which interconnected, and I remember eating pot noodles in the front room - later my bedroom - as our first meal there. But after that, it's back to vague impressions for at least the next year - nothing else until infant school.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I agree with your younger self: running in a circular route through rooms with multiple doors is brilliant :)

[triskellian]

Sadly*, blocking up one of those doors was one of the first things my parents did when we moved in, so that may have been the only time we got to do it :-(

(*Well, not so sadly for my brother, whose room was the middle one in the route, and was sufficiently tiny that if both doors had remained there would have been nowhere to put his bed.)

We did later invent a new circular route which involved jumping out of my (ground floor; bungalow) bedroom window, running round to the front door, and going into my room, but apparently this wasn't tolerated for very long ;-)

[lnr]

We were just at my bosses house last night, and I was doing exactly this! Though admittedly I didn't run, I walked, but it was still brilliant. And I commented as much and then learned there's a second loop you can do in the same house because they have two staircases! Oh to be a small child in that house!

In terms of memories I remember a Play School day out in the woods running round playing cops and robbers aged around 4, and I remember some things from infant school - though not many, but I don't seem to have anything of toddler age that sticks out as a real memory, only things my parents have told me, so perhaps the Play School one *is* the earliest.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

My Wokingham house had an indoor circular route which I loved as an adult. You could keep in antiphase with guests as the wandered looking for you!

I have an 'official' first memory in family lore about a caravan on a clifftop, but no other memories I could date. I always feel cheated that I can't remember the Moon landing when I was 16 months, as dammit I might have been shown it (though unlikely as it was in the small hours)

[glittertigger]

You can do this is our current house; it's one of the things I love about it. You are welcome to come and play :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I have one memory from about two-and-a-half, which is of being in the lavatory at our old house on the morning of day we moved to our new house. I was staring up at a crack in the ceiling plaster which for some reason was particularly fascinating. Also, the house was very cold (presumably because the front door was open for removals, or my parents had sensibly turned off the boiler, or both). But it is just a fleeting sense-impression.

If we hadn't happened to have moved house at that time, I don't supopse it would have stuck, and my earliest memory would then probably be of my little sister coming home from being born (about three months later). I guess appearance of younger siblings is another classic reference-point for these things.

BTW I really enjoyed Arthur and George, found it very readable and thought-provoking.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed Arthur and George

Ah, good. It's been on my to-read list for a while, but I can't remember why. And, in fact, I only learned this morning from the rear cover that the eponymous gentlemen are real persons. I haven't yet worked out who they are.

It's entirely possible that it was only on my list because I saw it in an attractive window display in Daunt Books :)

[lnr]

I don't remember *either* of my sisters being born, despite being nearly 5 when Em was.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

My earliest memory is of a red carpet, and from my description, my parents identified it to a visit to a great aunt that happened when I was less than two. It's a bit fuzzy. (My memory, not the carpet - I think it was actually quite an expensive thick carpet, and we mostly had lino plus a few threadbare rugs because we were skint.)

I clearly remember my brother being born, when I was two-and-a-bit. Or rather, I remember him showing up as a newborn when Mummy came home from hospital - in those days they didn't let children in hospitals, even to visit. (I have stronger and clearer memories from a few years later when my brothers were in hospital and my mum went to visit them - each time, I had to sit on a chair in the corridor outside the ward and read quietly, because the strict rule was that children other than patients were not allowed on the ward. And paid-for childcare hardly existed at the time, assuming we could've found the money for it. I didn't mind that much at the time: they were special new really interesting books. (Smart mother management there.) But in retrospect, that's absolutely bloody awful, and I feel desperately for my poor mother having to juggle the three of us like that.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

My earliest is of Mum heating a needle over a candle flame before using it to enlarge the hole in the rubber nipple of the bottle she was using to feed my younger brother. I'm reasonably confident that it's my earliest, as it's the only one in which said brother is still an infant; I would have been between 2½ and 3½ years old.

[satyrica.livejournal.com]

i have no idea what my 'earliest memory' is and i think that a lot of my early 'memories' are mostly things that were subsequently reinforced by seeing photographs of particular events rather than independent recollections; I remember putting down an incident where I ran across a road as my earliest memory for a secondary school English project and my Mum denying such a thing had ever happened; pretty much all my memories from pre-Secondary School are more impressionistic than specific

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

When my father went into the Navy in 1942, war we went to live with my mother's parents where, on the landing, was a huge Victorian steel engraving of a little girl in a white dress with a wide checked sash, leaning on a St Bernard dog. I remember Granny holding me up to this picture to say hello to the dog. We'd moved to a house of our own before I was two.