Blogging meme: earliest clear memory
I know I’m a bit weird in a few respects, but there’s one respect in which I been said to be particularly odd. I’m still wondering just how much.
I’d like to know the experience of others in this respect. Predictably, I’m going with a blog-tagging-meme-thing.
The rules for this one are simple.
- Describe your earliest memory where this memory is clear, where clear means you can depict at least three details.
- Give an estimate of how old you were at this age.
- Tag five other bloggers with this meme.
I’ll start…
I have lots of memories from this period, and one that is perhaps earlier although I can’t tell. This is why I’ve been told that my memory is odd.
Okay. I was in my cot while I was teething. There was a blue animal sticker on the headboard of the cot (a dangerous and banned 70s style cot). When standing in the cot and facing the rails, I faced east towards the windows, some of which were glass slats that could be opened and closed. The floor was cement with a straw mat, the straw on the mat was wound in square shape*.
The paint on the cot was white and I was scraping it from the cot with my teeth. When I visualise on this, I can actually smell the smell of the dry paint as I scraped it off the cot. I can also remember the sound and rhythm of the scraping.
I can recall during one of these teething sessions, pondering if my mother existed when she was out of the room (baby solipsism I guess – why is a baby having abstract thoughts anyway?)
* In my other memory that may be earlier than this, I can recall having to slow down when crawling on the mat because the friction was burning my knees.
Upon verification with my mother about what age I was teething at (and to confirm the details of the cot and room and my use of the cot as a rusk, all which were confirmed), this would have occurred around the age of eight to nine months.
I tag;
AV, Mikey, Sammy, Oz Atheist and just to throw him off balance and to increase my Adelaidian quotient, Stephen Clark.
~ Bruce
Geez man that’s an early memory to remember. I can barely remember before three.
I will try!
Owing to common motifs at your blog, will the memory involve bowel movements? (Don’t worry, I’m not a Freudian, I won’t psychoanalyze you).
I don’t actually have much in the way of memory of those, which is odd considering how far back I can remember.
meme accepted, may take me a few days to put it together, but it will be way older than yours. 9 months, thats amazing!
This is a good question. I thought for many years that I had very few memories before 5 or 6 and then I critiqued a memory of sitting in a chair at a party table. Even what I was wearing, and where it was (in a nearby tennis club). My friend’s mother asking me for a drink.
What was this I thought.And then realised it could only have been the Coronation in June 1953. Then I realised I was almost 1!
Harold Wilson was one of those who thought he could remember the womb…hmmmmm(as you would say)
I won’t tag – but the first memory I can definitely say was not suggested, and that I can place, was on my fourth birthday when I nearly scalped myself on an open door to the burner under the hot water service. Earliest political memory was when I was stunned by Ming’s retirement (I was 5) – I’d got used to the idea that he’d been around forever.
Mind you, there are memories that are probably earlier, but they have been suggested by photos or tales from parents, or could have happened anywhere before starting school (e.g. being the “sheepdog” trying to get sheep in a pen: Real dog: couple of minutes – me: couple of hours) – I’ve just got no way of anchoring them.