What is the first thing you remember?

[GreyGeek]

I was reading this article about babies and what they know and how they learn:

Over the past two decades, scientists have shown that babies only a few months old have a solid grasp on basic rules of the physical world. They understand that objects can't wink in and out of existence, and that objects can't "teleport" from one spot to another.

It got me to wondering. These babies are doing sophisticated reasoning, yet they don't appear to have a sense of self, or of being self-aware. I tried thinking back to my early memories which, I assume, would be those of a self-aware person. I recall being held by my mother while I was still wearing diapers as she stood next to a white picket fence talking to a lady standing on the other side. I estimate that I was 18 months old. When I was 3 or so I recall singing "pop goes the weasel" while I and a group of my equally young friends danced around a goose-berry bush, as our parents did their thing inside our house.

My grandson Christian was about 2 years old. In the doctors office he was getting a check up. While standing on a chair he glanced out the window and said "I want to eat at taco-bell!". He said he remembers that event. (And yes, he is as sharp as a tack!)

[woodsmoke]

Re: What is the first thing you remember?

The absolute earliest memory I have is of a hot summer day when the "families" were going to have a big picnic. I still have the picture of the group. I was maybe a year old.

However, I can remember being on a blanket on the floor in the "eating room" (it was a very small four room house with a "cooking room" attached at the side), and I was watching people in the "cooking room" cooking the meal at a very large wood cook stove.

When I was much older, maybe twenty, and I mentioned that I could see that in my mind they were just amazed because the "cooking room" had been removed a short time after that event.

They said that it was just impossible for me to have remembered that.

But, it is also a matter of some humor to me that people do NOT remember early things.

I can remember many, many things of my first four(and a half) years of life in our first house. I can remember all the rooms. the woods stoves, the attic, and the stairs up to them, the massive ice storm that knocked down an old elm tree, riding a tricycle that I got for my third birthday in the house and my mother worrying about marking the floor.

BTW that is when I learned to like "classic music". It was snow four foot deep outside and my mother had moved the "dining table" so I had a place to ride in a circle, and the radio was playing "Sabre Dance" and to this very minute, I can still see myself riding in the circle, past the corner of the table just when there was the "downbeat" before the "upbeat" (it was also the "10" song! ).

At that moment, unbeknownst to me, I "understood" that I "understood" music.

But almost all people that I talk to have no memories before midway 5 to 10 at all and they are just dumbfounded that I do.

cool question GG! And I imagine that you get the same reaction from people that I do!

woodsmoke

[kjjjjshab]

Re: What is the first thing you remember?

I can't place the age better than <5, but I distinctly remember dropping my stuffed-toy puppy in the toilet while having him use the potty...

I can honestly say that my daughter's first memory will probably be of an armadillo mascot at a baseball game when she was two, since she said over and over on the way home, "I don't like that big armadillo" and a year later she still talks about it.

[arochester]

Re: What is the first thing you remember?

LOL!

Kind of off topic and kind of on topic.

I had a brain haemorrhage when I was late 47, not quite 48. Brain surgery. Absolutely no memory of 3 weeks. Zilch. Nada. Nothing.

Would I live? Would I die? Would I be a vegetable? People didn't know.

"What is the first thing you remember?"

I got out of hospital bed and fell on my face. I'm 6' 5" so my face had a bit to fall. I remember the dark red blood oozing out of my nose. I "knew" at that moment I was "coming back".

I was 59 a few days ago.

A few strange thoughts in hospital:
1) I thought I had gone on holiday to France and I didn't have a passport. ( I must have sub-consciously heard nurses talk about going on holiday)
2) I thought I might be murdered ( I must have sub-consciously heard about the guy in the next bed attacked by money-lenders)

woodsmoke talks about "I learned to like "classic music". Strangely, when I came out of hospital I liked Mozart...

[GreyGeek]

Re: What is the first thing you remember?

....
But almost all people that I talk to have no memories before midway 5 to 10 at all and they are just dumbfounded that I do.
...

That's my experience, too. I have a lot of memories of my dad, and of family life, when I was less than 4. Barely being able to carry a bucket full of coal from the shed to the house through a path in the snow that was up to my waist. Using crayon to write on the back of a hot, coal burning stove, because the crayon melted so easily and formed kaleidescope colors. I remember my mother feeding my younger sister, who was in diapers setting in a high chair, while she smoked a cigarette and read the Sunday comics. I remember my dad having such big biceps. The skin was so tight on them that I could not pinch it. I have images of my mom and dad fighting and her throwing things at him. One image stands out like a photograph. My older sister and I have fled outside to avoid being hit by things. We are standing on the grass next to the front porch. The front door flies open and dad is running out and down the steps, protecting his head with his arms. A pot is sailing through the air behind and above him, almost is slow motion, followed by a fork and a knife. It reminds me of the scene in 2001 when the bone flies into the air and become a space ship. Lots and lots of memories.

[GreyGeek]

Re: What is the first thing you remember?

..... Strangely, when I came out of hospital I liked Mozart...

You don't have to have a stoke to appreciate Mozart!

Did you ever learn what caused your stroke?

Four years ago my wife had to have open heart surgery because her Mitral valve came apart. She was on the heart-lung machine for 5 1/2 hours while they tried twice to repair it and finally was forced to replace it with a cow valve with a 20 year warranty. They kept her sedated for nearly 48 hours before they brought her out of anesthesia. When she awoke she couldn't talk nor feel or use the right side of her body. That was Tuesday afternoon. A CAT scan revealed she had a stroke while during the operation, due to a certain drug used to control bleeding. (She is not a hemophiliac, but her clotting time is longer than normal). Fortunately, by Saturday afternoon she had 95% of her speech back and only a little dragging in her right foot. Four years out and you can not distinguish he pre-stroke speech from her post stroke speech, and he wears out her shoe on her right foot only slightly before the left. However, our treadmill belt has a worn groove on the right side.

BTW, the doc said that while most do not experience strokes those who spend more than 1 1/2 hours on the heart-lung machine often generate "pump-head", a mental confusion which can last up to six months.

[arochester]

Re: What is the first thing you remember?

Did you ever learn what caused your stroke?

AVM - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arteriovenous_malformation

[GreyGeek]

Re: What is the first thing you remember?

You were extremely fortunate that it was in an area of the brain that could be reached by surgeons.

[woodsmoke]

Re: What is the first thing you remember?

Arochester, I'm glad that you survived and are here to relate the story. There is a theory that all the memories that we ever have had are really stored in the brain somewhere but we just don't let them out.

Maybe you liked Mozart a long time ago, or if your better half says NO!! then maybe as a kid.

woodsmoke

[erigais]

Re: What is the first thing you remember?

how strange they mention that kids learn objects dont teleport, and for my first memory, i thought my sister walked through a wall in a hallway!

[Qqmike]

Re: What is the first thing you remember?

I'm suspicious of this topic! "First memory" ... hmmm ... You may think it is/was your first memory, but who knows for sure? The brain is notorious for serving up to consciousness all sorts of stuff, seemingly as it so pleases.

It's interesting--amazing--how techniques such as hypnosis, self hypnosis, drum work (Stanislaw Groff's work, et. al.), and other methods can help the conscious mind access memories from your past. Self hypnosis is easy to learn. Putting yourself in the right frame of relaxed mind also works. People do it all the time when they think about their deceased pets: daydreaming about the pet, imagining, remembering, when all of a sudden it's as if the pet is actually "brought back to life," made real, and all sorts of forgotten memories about the pet and about yourself start popping into conscious awareness.

There ya go. Enough of this, lest you guys relegate me to the Silly Corner.

[Detonate]

Re: What is the first thing you remember?

My earliest memory is when my uncle, my mother's brother came home from Europe in 1944. I was three years old at the time. I remember him standing in the hallway in uniform, and the reason I remember it is because it was the first time I ever saw my mother go completely ballistic and it scared me.