Earliest Memory

oh yes, i remember being a baby, in some sort of high chair or seat thing in the garden. my parents go into the house and can see them from the kitchen windows. then i hear a voice telling me things such as look after your mother and beware your father because he can be grumpy... no one was there, this was strange voice from nowhere from what i remember.

i remember understanding english in my head but yet wondering why i cant reproduce that from my voice.

i then also remember trying hard to hold my memories as i realise i could remember some memories but then other times were blank. so i though to focus on trying to remember my level of sentience as a sort of proof or leg up for when im older... perhaps there was something else i actually wanted to remember but i forgot it....then just could only remember to remember something and then that thought of trying to remember something turned into a thought to try remember my existential being and sentience. but perhaps there was other things that i thought i needed to remember but was lost.

makes me wonder if as a child we still hold memories of what was before birth, perhaps a past life, perhaps the entire energetic fabric of reality and eternal being... but whatever if i was trying to remember anything beyond this life all i could remember is trying to remember and hold onto a memory for myself in the future to know lol

perhaps when we die we restart our lives from the beginning, like a vhs tape your existance is only limited to your time, once you reach the end of your time you rewind and start to the back again at the start of the film. perhaps the voice i heard was my older voice trying to give me a advantage this time around, and my wanting to remember was wanting to remember that i have already done this before... all i can do is guess and theorise.

My earliest memory is of my Gran's charming old house. It was called Seaview and sat atop a green hill that overlooked the sea - my earliest memory and memories are of this house and staying there with my Gran and Grampy as my parents used to work away a lot. I remember one memory, I must have been 4 or 5 and I went in to a room that was out of bounds and it turned out to be Grampy's study and library. A beautiful room with dark wood panels, tall bookshelves, a stone fire place and two rounded windows that looked out to the sea. It was beautiful and my Grampy was sat by the window reading a book - he closed it and stood up, pipe in his mouth and I remember feeling terrified that I would get in trouble for going in to the room and he simply smiled, smoked a little and said "So my girl, you've discovered my treasure!" And it was there where I then spent most of my time, so long as I promised not to mess around. It's a lovely memory for me and I can still picture it like it happened yesterday. I can even still smell the books and that beautiful wood smell from the walls and can even still hear the sea as it crashed at the bottom of the hill.

My Gran and Grampy are both dead now sadly. Gran was 83 when she died and Grampy 89. Someone else owns Seaview but I do go up there every now and then, just to see the house, I can't go in but I can still look. I hope whoever's in there now appreciates how special it is. It's where some of my happiest memories are.

This has been an interesting thread to read. I have some quite early memories, though I can't date them very accurately, except that I do remember a very hot summer which must have been 1976 and I'd have been 4 that autumn. I remember playing in the garden in a den we made from some kind of pruned bushes/hedge branches. And the slide being very hot.

Also we moved house when I was about 5 which dates memories of the old house, which I remember the layout of vividly. I can remember the carpet in the back room and sitting with my Mum leaning on the radiator and she was reading to me. I remember my bedroom, the wallpaper (a William Morris with dandelions), the curtains (Paddington bear) and the furniture (I actually still have the wardrobe!). I remember the mark on the wall of my parents' bedroom where Dad fell through the ceiling! (He was OK).

A lot of it is very visual, with some sensations, like the rough fur of my teddy bear and the smell of his head. The feeling and the weird visual of how the ground moved in a pushchair if you didn't look round but just kept your eyes fixed. I can't access sounds, that's odd, maybe some music, Mum used to sing to us and there are some songs which are very evocative to me which I know she used to sing, so maybe some music which makes me feel a certain way is linked to very old memories.

I do remember stuff about infant school too, but those memories can't be as early. It's been fun remembering. Most of my earliest memories are nice, not all the school ones are of course...

Oh, just noticed how old this post is!

How's it going? I can remember being in a pram and a cot and being super bored, lying on my back, according to my mother I sat up early - as i wanted to see what was going on! I remember playing with kittens, as a toddler, which probably explains my love of cats! I recall lots of memories that my friends don't - it's a double edged sword though, as there's lots, that I'd rather forget!

Wearing a sticky-out paper taffeta party dress and bronze party shoes for my third birthday party.  I remember the crinkly sound it made  

Yes, it was a truly early memory. 

Just finished rewatching the episode. It was a very silly and funny but at that age slightly unsettling show. There’s a scene in that ep where they’re all at the roller disco and Mrs Meaker starts belting out a number like she’s the new Olivia Newton John or something and then Dobbin the disturbing ghost pantomime horse comes bounding in just pure hobbyhorsing around, cutting some capers while Timothy Claypole the jester ghost hangs off the back of him on his skates, then goes flying off like Todd Carty on an ice rink. And I thought, that’s it… that’s the moment. This is what I remember! And it’s 7 months earlier than what I thought my earliest memory was. 
While that’s kind of cool, I was almost sad to loose the ‘Doctor Who is my earliest memory’ thing that’s been an article of faith to me. Except… near the end of the ep something vaguely rang a bell again. A scene where the Meakers’ lift gets ejected through a roof and into the night sky. They hover up there for a moment in this levitating lift, the doors open to space. And it’s quite a TARDIS like image. And wonderful for the imagination- that incongruity. It even looks like how they do the TARDIS in hover mode now, doors open to take in the splendour of space. 
 
Anyway, I know this is all very silly - overtalking a disposable bit of telly from 43 years and one month ago. But it was strange and rather lovely to have that adjustment handed to me via a chance remark today that needn’t have happened. My life is no different and yet where memory starts… is. How strange. How wonderful. And what a fabulously ridiculous first thing for the brain to say ‘I’m keeping that’ - panto horse assorted eccentrics at a roller disco just being freewheeling and fun. 

I probably gave the impression that I had remembered it was March 1980 when in fact I just discovered that today. But it means I have a memory earlier than what I thought was my first one, and by 215 days! 

I am in awe that you are able to remember that event with such clarity.   

I remember crawling in the front room of the house we were in at the time, probably grandfather's. This room was usually a guest room meant for special occasions. I hadn't yet learnt to walk I don't think. I remember feeling some discomfort in my tummy, then my napppy somehow got abundantly filled. The door opened. My mother, tall and angry, was there.

'At once!' she ordered. I remember wondering what these two articulated sounds or words night mean. Similar memories include noticing the whorls and patterns of my fingernails, and seeing the reflection of my clothes in the steel of the electric heater. 

I'm amazed by your ability to remember things like this. If I think back to programmes I enjoyed watching as a child, I would be incapable of remembering the details of what had happened in a particular episode, or the date a particular episode had been broadcast. 

I've just had the most extroardinary revelation, quite by chance. On the small Discord community I'm on for Doctor Who fans, someone mentioned a tenant who they are replacing in a flat they're moving to. This person's behaviour had been quite out of control and an example given was that she'd often roller-skate around inside the shared flat. I said offhandedly 'That sounds ridiculous. The only time I've seen living room roller skating was in an episode of Rentaghost in 1981.'

Then, me being me, I thought... best check the accuracy of that memory/statement. The whole episode - Roller Disco-  is on YouTube and is from March 14 1980, with no evidence of a repeat having occurred. So my earliest memory of life is somewhat earlier that October of that same year, and no longer involves Doctor Who, now relegated to second-earliest! Also, I'd have been two years 5 months old in March, which seems early for a retained memory. But how else to explain? Anyway, maybe Rentaghost not Doctor Who kicking off my stored conscious memories  explains just as readily or moreso why I'm not quite right in the head.

P.S. There is no skating in the house in it, it's all at Christopher Biggins' roller-disco, though there is one bit where Mr Claypole ends up out in the street going past residential housing so maybe the two got conflated. Shows how the memory cheats even as it persists.  

haha probably, its strange some of the things that stick in memory

it's not being shy, it was survival instinct !!! I bet she looked ready to bite

i have 2, unsure where they fit chronologically together

1. waking in an ambulance seeing "parents" walking up. i had febrile convulsions as a young child

2. in nursery school, a staff member losing temper with me because i couldn't do whatever was trying to be taught, unsure if same time, but possible that person said "i dont bite" when i was "shy"(hate the word, its never fit me) about going to her.

arg, it feels everything i type is depressing lately

I'm guessing I'm the only one here with bad memory? The earliest I can remember is when I was at school I would have been eight or nine at the time. I remember standing in the play ground alone watching the other girls play together.

It's not clear though, I don't have the best memory.

I can visualise being in Kindergarten - Play School, back then - forty years ago, but I don't remember anything about it. 

My earliest memory is of nursery school, my mum and I at the gates and me crying because I didn't want to go in. She did eventually take me home. She remembers this as well it's surprising how often she brings it up.

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