What is the first memory you have

[p.giannakis]

We photographers are good in recording memories. We record them on film, print them on papers, store them on memory cards.
But what about your oldest memories, the ones not recorded on any medium other than your mind.
What is the oldest memory that you have?

 

[ornate_wrasse]

One of my oldest memories is when I was a very young child. I grew up in Washington, D.C. and my parents were driving us around National Airport [now called Ronald Reagan National Airport]. This was the very early 1950's and all of the planes flying into National Airport were propeller planes. It was well before the jet age. I remember a plane coming in for a landing so low it was almost on top of our car! It was very loud and, as a young child, I became quite scared. It left a very big impression on me and I have remembered it to this day.

 

[David Hughes]

Hi,

It's difficult to date them but they are all of or during the war; the V1's and v2's especially and running to the air raid shelters. Where we were then was very badly hit by them.

Regards, David

 

[BillBingham2]

My mother pulling me in a sled to the store on a winter day. From 509 Arnett Blvd in Rochester to the store a few blocks away.

B2

 

[Lauffray]

I have memories of spending quite some time in airports and airplanes going to visit my dad when he worked overseas in the early 90s

 

[ChrisPlatt]

I have a memory - real or imagined - of watching JFK's funeral on TV.
I was 2½ years old at the time.

Chris

 

[Spavinaw]

My father worked building Guntersville Dam, Alabama. It was completed on January 17, 1939. That was three days before my third birthday. My father took my mother and me to see the completed dam. I remember looking down into the empty lock. I probably remember it because there was a small stream of water spurting out between the closed doors at the other end of the lock.
Another very early memory I cannot put a date on was when a barn was being built at my aunt and uncles place. I can remember the men putting up the rafters silhouetted against the sky. Both of these memories are just as clear as if I were looking at a picture of them.

 

[FrankS]

Having immigrated from Germany to Canada, I remember playing with kids on the street as a 3 and 4 year old. Sally K. was the first older woman I was interested in. She had a barbie doll and would not let me watch as she changed her dolls clothes.
We lived in a basement apartment and the first Christmas, my parents arranged to have santas bag of presents lowered down in front of the high living room window which was at ground level.

 

[nikon_sam]

Around 1964 or 1965 we were living in an apartment complex waiting for our house to be built...being 4 or 5 years old I didn't understand everything that was going on...on the day we were moving my sister and I were washing dishes and were told not to waste water...I always thought that we had to move because we were running out of hot water...
I also remember, in that same apartment, sticking a bobby-pin in the electric socket...I was pretending I was driving a car and that was the key to turn it on...

 

[Dwig]

My earliest memory is boarding a Constellation to fly from Louisville KY to Philadelphia PA to attend my mother's father's funeral. Mom had flown earlier (previous day or two??) and I was traveling with my dad. It was sometime in the fall of '53 and I was 2 years old. I have a few other memories from that trip, but none of the return flight.

 

[burancap]

I had what I call a "flash" memory during my youngest years. It was a vision --a large, unique starburst pattern. Very distinct. It didn't really bother me, but was always just sorta' there in the periphery.

Along came first communion and the first dry run in a nearby church. At some point, I glanced toward the rear of the church and wham! I stopped in my tracks. Like a key sliding effortlessly through the tumblers, this vision I had matched up with a large 20' or so diameter wood and brass starburst clock. Exactly. It was mounted on the rear wall above the baptismal area. The last time I had been in that particular church was my baptism.

 

[CMur12]

I remember being in our back yard in the snow when I looked down at my blue snow suit. I was probably less than two years old. I also remember walking down the hall to my bedroom and just seeing a big hole there. Years later, my mother told me that that was when I was two, there was dry rot, and they had to take out and replace the floor in my bedroom.

- Murray

 

[gb hill]

Pointing at a big 2 story house & telling my mom as she pushed me in a stroller, I'm going to buy that house for you when I grow up.

 

[x-ray]

It hard to put a date on something like this but I was extremely young and remember my grandmother holding me and rocking back and forth in a big wooden swing under the apple trees in her yard. The way the light broke through the leaves stuck in my mind. It's the only memory from my very early days.

We lived in southern Illinois in the late 40's until 1951. I was 3-1/2 when we moved to Tennessee. While we lived in Illinois I have very fond memories of my dad taking my brother and my photo with his Argus C3. The sound of the shutter snapping and the frying sound of the flashbulbs when they fired and that smell from the plastic coating on the bulbs. I remember so many times watching him run his film in a plastic FR processing tank and then later printing them with his old Federal enlarged. I always loved the red light, click of his GE timer and the smell of the chemicals. It was magic watchng the print coming up in the porcelain tray of developer. There's no doubt theses memories played a big part in my career as a photographer.

The one other vivid memory was a tornado that went through our neighborhood while we lived in Illinois.

 

[Iestrada]

One of my earliest memories is being very puzzled with my dad's version of a color TV. I was 2 or 3 years old, '67-'68. He taped a colorized plasticky film on the screen of the TV. This is in a small town in Mexico. Not only were one of the few families to own a TV in town. It was also in color! No one had one of those! The images had nothing to do with reality. It had a rainbow effect on the colors images looked like. It must have been an outstanding salesman that sold my dad such a gadget. Weird to say the least..

 

[Dpingr1]

Mine is seeing President Kennedy at a political rally in Flint, Michigan, in 1962. I was 2 years old, and I specifically remember JFK being pointed out on the stage. I wasn't as interested in him as I was in a tan colored balloon, floating away about 50 feet up. I asked my Dad to get it for me -- if anyone was tall enough to do that, I thought, it was my father.

 

[AlTheKiller]

I think my oldest that I can remember is finally being able to reach my cup of juice on top of the kitchen counter. Seems strange but there was a moment of self realization

 

[Cameron]

My oldest memory (and I've tried for a long time to remember something earlier than this) is posing with my family to take a photograph in my grandmother's house, right in front of her dining room table, near the living room. I was probably around 3 years old at the time.

Funnily enough, my oldest memory still has to do with photography!

 

[bmattock]

I have a memory - real or imagined - of watching JFK's funeral on TV.
I was 2½ years old at the time.

Chris

I was also about that age (I will be 55 in July) and I recall people crying and me not understanding why. Yes, I do remember that.

 

[Darthfeeble]

Uhhhhhhhh................

Actually I recall various events from about 2 yrs old on. Going to a baseball game in Phoenix, AZ before my sister was born, riding home in the rumble seat of our Model A Ford. No car seat, seat belt, rollbar or padded dash.