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I was about a year old, and I was sitting in a playpen looking out at the pool. My parents and I were at a 4th of July party in New Jersey. I could see the tall trees, hear the sound of people laughing and a baby crying. Then I heard and saw a little boy fall into the pool. No one else saw or heard him, but since he couldn’t swim he drowned. Later when my dad went swimming, he saw the body and thought it was a doll. I know this memory’s accurate because my mom remembers exactly where the playpen was and from where it stood I could easily see the pool. Also, a 2-year-old boy -drown at the party and police reports show that no one saw or heard him. [This memory was originally submitted on Saturday, November 07, 1998 at 15:10:00 [PST to the Exploratorium Earliest Memory Website, which ceased accepting input in 2000. See www.exploratorium.edu/memory/earlymemory/memoryform.html for some of the submissions.]
Posted By: Sarah No Last Name
The earliest memory I can remember is learning how to walk. I remember the room. I remember the hall in my house in India. I know someone was holding both my hands, and I remember looking up and seeing my grandmother's face. I remember having the nicest feeling. I think it's the FEELING that I remember more than the walking—and how the light was in the room as well. Sometimes now, very rarely, I wake up in the morning and the light is similar to what it was that day and it feels really good. It reminds me of how nice it was to be with my grandmother and just be so excited and really wobbly and giddy cause I couldn't walk.
Another memory I have is just standing at the bottom of some stairs and looking up and WISHING I could climb them. I wanted to climb them up and I just couldn't.
Posted By: Freny Sepai
Art Student, London
I remember coming down some stairs and pooping. I wasn’t wearing a diaper because my parents must have decided, they had decided that I was potty-trained, but I wasn’t. I remember running to hide, I was so embarrassed. I remember feeling really ashamed although no one got mad at me. My dad laughed about it. Some of my memories are vague, but this one is clear. I still feel how embarrassed I felt. I know that sometimes it’s hard to know if someone told the story and you think you remember it, or if you really remember it on your own. This one I’m sure I remember on my own. I wasn’t talking yet, but I was walking.
Posted By: Will S.
Fixer, Hawaii and Colorado
My earliest memory is my mother pushing me in a stroller up the street. It was daytime, and I can remember coming out of our yard and crossing the junction of Hawthorne and Airport Road and going up the street. I can tell you just about where I was per foot. At that time, there was a house that was on the left-hand side that's no longer there. My dog was with us. His name was Smokey Joe Seefus and he was a black lab mix that had a bob tail, but I learned all those things later.
Posted By: Jana Bonny
Artist and Reiki Master, Silverdale, Washington
One of my early memories was from before I could walk, and I certainly couldn’t talk. I remember climbing out of my crib and crawling across the floor to where the toy train cars were set up. My mother told me they were “magic trains.” I was entertained for hours watching them go around and around til they stopped. I didn't like it when they stopped.
Posted By: S. B.
Rural Finger Lakes, NY
I think my earliest memory is from when I was so young I couldn’t even roll over by myself. I remember lying on my back and looking up at my aunt, at least I think it was her. She was looking down at me with such joy. I remember her talking to me in that way people do when they talk to babies, a sort of ga-ga, high-pitched, happy talk and how good it made me feel. She seemed very glad to see me; she leaned in and kissed me on the nose.
Posted By: S. B.
Rural Finger Lakes, NY
I have a lot of memories of before I was 3 years old and a few from when I was real tiny. The very first memory I have I must have been weeks old at most because I couldn't see. All that there was, was just, you might call it white haze. I just really couldn't see.
Posted By: Roger Steinbach
Happy family man, Downers Grove, Illinois
My earliest memory is a strange, recurring dream that I think is probably a birth memory. I think I've had it for years, for forever, it's just been so much a part of me. It's me going down a very narrow channel. I am traveling down the canal in a head-first position as if I were swimming. There seems to be a little water in the channel, and I'm going down that. It is very enclosed and I can see the color of the canal and it has red in it. The impression I have is RED! I seem to somehow be aware that there's water on the other side of something, and somehow I know there's a mouth to this channel, an ending "out there." One day it occurred to me, "Good Lord, did my mind record in some way the birth canal? Am I in some way remembering going down the birth canal?"
Posted By: Elsie Frost McMurry
Author, East Lansing, Michigan
I have a distinct recollection of language and learning it. I must have been breast feeding, although I was so tiny I didn't have any idea of what it was, but I must have been too aggressive or something, because my mom slapped me. I think that's why I remember this, because there was something that startled me into thinking about it. I got slapped, and I understood about one out of every third or fourth word that my mother said. I must have been days old, but I remember specifically thinking, "Don't worry about those words you don't know, you already learned the ones you know, so the others will come." People think babies don't think, but they do. I remember the word "love" was very well known to me. I remember that one and "sorry," because she slapped me. And then, after that, she set me down on a table top that must have been a bassinet or something. I was put down on my back, and I couldn't see, and I couldn't turn over, and she left the room, and I cried. I was crying just to see what would happen. I had no question about it. I was crying just to see if I could get away with it, to see if it would make her come back. She came back to the door and stood in the door, which seemed to me a long ways away. She stood there silently, and I knew. I knew she thought I didn't know she was there, and I knew she was there. I could hear her as loud as if she was right beside me. She stood there awhile being real quiet to see if I was okay. I squalled as hard as I could and then I went to asleep.
Posted By: Roger Steinbach
Happy family man, Downers Grove, Illinois
The earliest memory I have was from when I was less than 2 months old. I remember I was in my crib, although I don't remember it as a crib because I didn't have that concept yet, but I was lying in there, and there was an animal with me. It was a cat, and she had her kittens in my crib! I remember being with babies and the mommie and it was all fun. Later when my mother told me the story, she said I was only a week old or something, and when she went to get me in the morning, the cat wouldn't let her come near the crib.
Posted By: D. G.
Interior Designer, Washington
