Wow, my posting rate is really down. Really, I just can't think of anything to write about.
Anyway, the other day Jingping and I were talking about memory. We were talking about how strange it is to remember things from very, very early on. I point out that things seem dim in most of my oldest memories, like the lights are turned down low; she pointed out that the very earliest ones seem almost completely visual. It's true for me: I can remember images from when I was 3 or 4 years old, and specific events from as early as 4; but, I can't remember many details of what it was like to experience those things.
Anyway, people, what's the earliest things you can remember? I know for certain that I can remember my 4th birthday. Some other, foggier recollections seem to be even older, but I have no way of dating them.
Okay, that's it.
I remember hiding from my mom under a sheet on the floor so that I could suck my thumb without getting in trouble. This was when I lived in Minnesota, so I had to be three years old. I remember the colors of the room, and the funny look on my mom's face when she pulled the sheet off and found me. I remember thinking that I should be in trouble, but it was weird that my mom was smiling.
ReplyDeleteAnother funny thing about this memory is that I remember it both from my perspective (being under the sheet...it was morning and the sunlight in the room made it pretty easy to see my legs and my thumb because the sheet was pretty thin), but I also remember it from an outside perspective (I have a memory of seeing the window, without curtains, letting in a thick beam of sunlight that stretched across the floor and over the lump of me under the sheet on the floor. Very odd, but the memory is very vivid.
Explaination?
My memories are all very fuzzy and I can attach no dates to them. I remember following the dogs under the fence and across the field when I was four, because my mom thought I was totally gone and freaked out and I didn't understand because I was just following the dogs. That was when we lived way out in the country and had a farm, the last house on the road.
ReplyDeleteI also remember walking out in my pajamas at that farm to talk to the men who drove the road grader. Our road had to be graded sometimes since it was gravel and dirt and got very ruddy. I thought the road grader was the coolest thing, and I wanted to drive one. I must have been four then, too. I don't really remember three, I guess.
I remember being at the beach and realizing that my mom and granny were gone. My pappaw told me they were on a walk in the water. I ran into the water after them and a wave came and I went under, even though the water was very shallow. I remember looking around under the water and my mom and granny grabbed me and pulled me up. Acording to my mom, I was two and 1/2. Very young I know, but I have such a good memory its creepy. Like Murph, this is one of the most vivid memories I have ever had.
ReplyDeletewhat with everyone being so descriptive, here's my 4th birthday:
ReplyDeletei remember my father coming home, and telling me there was something for me in the trunk of the car. i went outside to look, and it was a matchbox car; a silver delivery van with Superman's picture on the side.
then, i remember later, seems like evening because everything's so dark;
sitting at this old coffee table (which is now in my apartment) in front of a birthday cake, with my parents on either side of me. i remember throwing up on the table. i remember feeling bad, maybe because i was sick, or because my parents were worried or something.
that's it.