What's Your Earliest Childhood Memories?

My grandpa used to let me start their car when we went somewhere. One day they're not getting out of the house fast enough so I attempted to start it by myself. To this day I don't know why it started in gear, but yeah, I drove it through the back wall of their garage.

There was a hall tree that got ran over. My grandpa being the frugal woodworker he was fixed it, only it was now much shorter. That half-height hall tree was in their garage until he was gone and grandma moved into a nursing home.

Next time I see my mom I'm going to ask her if she knows why that car would start in gear.

 

I was 8 and riding my new bike out in front of the house showing off for my older sisters friends when I ate shit and busted my chin open. Dad wasn't home from work yet, Mom didn't drive, so she cleaned me up and waited for dad to get home to drive me to the hospital for stitches. We wait for a while until the Doc can stitch me up, then head home. I trip going up the steps into the kitchen and split my chin wide open again on the metal trim molding. Dad STILL isn't even in the house yet when I go screaming back outside bleeding all over again. Back to the hospital, same doc, made a mess of stitching it up this time as there wasn't much to work with anymore. Still have the big scar.

There were actually a lot of those type of stories. lol.

 

Older cars did not have interlocks. We actually had to remember stuff.

 

I forget.

 

I did one of those but that's not my earliest memory. I must have been at least five. Drinking water out of a bathroom sink, standing on a stepstool or something. I slipped, cracked my chin open on the sink.

When we got out of the hospital, my mother passed out on the parking lot so we had to go back in.

 

Unbelievably, I have one memory from when I was in diapers. I shit myself and then sat down. I remember it because I instantly regretted the feeling of hot, steaming shit spreading all over my ass.

Next memory after that is my brother knocking over the Christmas tree when I was a couple years older.

Next one after that was tricycling into a pothole one spring and skinning my entire forehead when I faceplanted on the pavement.

edit: One thing I miss a lot. When I was little mom and dad would drive the hilly backroads to grandparents house and even at legal speeds every hilltop gave me that negative g butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling. Sometimes I’m going to the track just to chase that same feeling.

 

This will freak the moronials the eff out...when we were out in the country in central FL, Dad would let us stand on the seat between him and the steering wheel and steer the car.

 

You fuckers probably had lead paint in your house, too.

AND your gas!

 

We did...and knew not to eat or drink either one. They tasted like crap anyway.

 

My worst was at 5 years old, dad worked 2nd shift. Dad leaves for work and somehow the German Shepard gets out and runs over to our neighbors yard, across the street.

So I yell for him to come home a few times and he doesn’t pay attention. I walk across the street and pick up a hickory willow switch. Those branches would really whip around.

Anyway, I yell get home and swat him across the rear end. He turns around and bites me right on my face, I drop to the ground screaming/crying and the neighbor comes running out of the house into the yard.

At this point the dog realizes it is me and he screwed up, so he lays next to me and starts licking my face.

I still remember laying in the front seat of the station wagon, between my mom and our neighbor Joanne who was a nurse. My mom goes to lift the wash cloth/bandages they put over the wound and Joanne tells her not to look, my mom does look and starts balling.

I ended up having over 300 stitches and they said it wouldn’t be visible by the time I started high school. I had 5-6 plastic surgeries on it over the years, and you can still see it.

Evidently I was very lucky I didn’t go blind in the one eye, you could see the nerve running to that eye. I believe it was the optic nerve, but I honestly don’t remember.

 

Fine, you win.

 

I honestly have very few memories earlier than elementary school. Right now I can't name a single teacher from middle or high school.

I'm sure the mental health pros here are all thinking "a lot to unpack here"

 

On Google Maps a handful of years back, I found the house we used to live in back in Indiana until I was about 4. I sent the pin to my dad and asked if that was it. He asked how I got the address and found the house, because we haven't been back there. I said just going off memories of the field behind, the Dairy Queen, the fact it was a cul-de-sac, etc. He was weirded out by me remembering all of that and didn't believe I just found it like that without asking for the address or anything. I can also describe the inside down to the color of the carpet as well as the neighbor's house.

 

More like the ‘heads are wondering where you got such potent bud for all those years.

 

Being next to the fireplace in winter time.

 

I did go thru a lot of weed for a few years, but had a severe lack of childhood memories well before that

 

You probably had them, but you forgot you did once the hotboxing began

 

Spring of 1972. Three and a half years old, mom driving, grandma passenger, me standing in the front seat between them. We turned on to our country road from the highway and could see the smoke. Pulled into the driveway to see the house fully engulfed.

I can still play that in my mind like a movie.

 

Ha, wish I didn’t. Lol.
I have an eye disease now that gives me double vision which comes and goes. That is the eye that is goofed up and I have to close to eliminate the double vision.

 

Several memories from around the same time when I was 3 - 4years old. I have no idea which order they happened. Going to a wedding somewhere in south London, going on a train with my mother to see my grand parents in the north of England, I'd got some new books just for the journey and my mum forgot to pack them. Watching the 1960 FA Cup Final on television, that was a month before my fourth birthday.

I remember my first day of school when I was five vividly, can even remember the names of a lot of the people in my class.