Tell me some of your earliest memories as a child!

1. I can remember being 4 years old and kicking my kindergarten teacher in the leg because she wouldn't let me go out to recess unless I drank white milk instead of chocolate like I usually drank. I had to sit in the corner for a week.
2. I was 5 years old and got my tonsils and adenoids removed and plugs in my ears and I can remember being on the gurney. I remember all the ice cream afterwards.
3. I can remember being about 6 and my neighbor got his stomach blown out by a firecracker and I was terrified of them ever since.
4. I can remember when I was a kid and all the neighborhood kids would come to our house to play because we had a treehouse, basketball goal, big trampoline, etc. There was a little boy a lot younger than all the other kids and everyone was really mean to him and used to throw cicada shells on him because he was so scared of them.

What are some things you remember as a kid?

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

PunkRockSuperStar · 61-69, M

1. Hearing The Beatles' 'Penny Lane' playing on a jukebox in a cafe around the time it was in the charts. I can't have been much older than three at the time. I don't know why that song stood out for me amongst the others I must have heard, but perhaps it's just a mark of how great The Beatles' songs were.
2. I have very vague memories of seeing steam-locomotive-hauled trains, and on one occasion, of travelling on one. The last steam locomotive in Scotland was withdrawn in 1967, so again, I can't have been older than three.
3. Around the same time, my parents had recently moved into a new house and hadn't fully furnished and carpeted it yet. I thought it would be an idea to express my creative talents by drawing on the bare floorboards of one of the rooms with a bottle of liquid shoe polish. I remember the shoe polish was brown. My parents were very displeased indeed when they saw what I'd done. I had no idea I was doing anything wrong!
4. I remember seeing kids being spanked in the street by their parents, or told they'd be getting a sore backside when they got home. That was pretty normal then.
5. I remember absent-mindedly wandering off with a random woman when on a shopping trip with my mother. Scary and embarrassing when I realised what had happened. Come to think of it, I hope the random woman wasn't trying to abduct me! Again, I'd have been three or four.
6. I remember my parents and grandparents talking about the Michael Colliery Disaster (a horrific underground fire in which several miners were killed), which happened in September 1967. I'd probably just had my fourth birthday at the time.

Something I've often wondered about early-childhood memories is how much they are distorted by old photos that you have. I'm sure photos will trigger memories of certain people, places and events, while you'll have long forgotten about many other things that you don't have photos of.