CONFESS!!!! A childhood memory you had from when you were younger than 5

[LynneSin]

I don't think many of us can remember what we did when we were five years old or younger. I only have about 3 memories of that time and everything else is a blank.

I remember I owned this green and dark blue winter coat with fake white fur around the hood.

I remember when my brother got food poisoning from the local elementary school; in fact the whole school got it from the Macaroni Salad served that day. I was wearing the above jacket and playing in the playground at the school while my mother was inside waiting to get my brother from the school nurse. There were more kids outside in the school yard puking their brains out.

I remember the day I learned to do a #2 in the toilet. I was just over 3 and another girl down the street who was 4 was with me that day (our mothers were gossiping in the kitchen). I saw her go to the bathroom and then I did the same thing. I never looked back at diapers.

Those are my only memories from before the age of 5. What memories do you remember - pick a favorite or 2

[commander bunnypants]

1. not to many good memeories but a few

A trip to New york, playing doctor with a cousin, sparklers on the fourth. My GI joes

DDQM

[SW FL Dem]

14. My earliest memory is of the day Kennedy was shot

I was 5 and can still see it vividly.

[sangh0]

31. I remember the funeral

I remember watching the funeral procession on TV and wondering why they were showing nothing on the TV.

I also remember when MLK was shot. My mother cried, so I asked her why. She said a great man had been killed. I asked what was great about him, and she said that he was helping black people, so I asked "What's a black person?"

I also remember shaving with my Dad's razor, and cutting my face up.

I remember paying Doctor with my mother's friend's daughter.

Somethings, you never forget

[daveskilt]

2. being force fed in hospital. thanks for making me think of THAT again. nt

[nini]

3. I remember...

our dog having puppies

giving 'shows' in the living room/dining room using a BBQ spatula as a microphone. I'm sure I was quite the talent :eyes:

Falling on the hot floor heater grill and burning my butt - I had run out of the bathroom after a bath nekkid and fell.

[rinsd]

4. Getting my front tooth knocked out....

By my older cousins spinning me around then they let me go....straight into the wall unit.

[TlalocW]

5. I remember being in my crib

Which was in the northwest corner of what was always my room. It was early morning because sunlight was streaming in the window that faced to the east. I had one of those Mego Superman dolls from the 1970s that were about 10 inches tall, and I was taking his S-insignia off of his chest and sticking it to other things. I'm guessing I was somewhere between 1 and 2.

TlalocW

[GainesT1958]

6. My parents upset...

And I didn't understand why--around my fourth birthday. It turned out it was the Cuban missile crisis--explained to me several years later, of course!

Getting through the Ash Wednesday Storm in early 1962.

Getting my first sliding board, when I was 3 1/2.

Playing with my cousin's toy battleship at Christmas when I was 3.

Those are some of the most prominent ones!:D

B-)

[GumboYaYa]

7. One of my first very distinct memories was Nixon getting on the

helicopter to leave the White House after he resigned. I was either just about to turn four or had just turned four at the time. I also remeber my grandma (who kept me) and I would alternate days between watching Captain Kangaroo and the Watergate hearings.

I also remember working on clay with my grandma in her pottery studio. In fact most of my early memories involve my grandma.

[Speck Tater]

8. Lying in my crib and

looking up at my hands and thinking "how strange it is to be small again."

It took me years and years to finally realize that not everybody remembers who they were before their current life. It's kind of sad really that they don't.

[nuxvomica]

9. "I never looked back..." LOL

I don't remember any of my potty milestones but I have a vivid memory of when I was three and drank gasoline. I can even picture the pink plastic toy teacup I drank it from.
I remember a Sunday drive with the whole family. I asked my father what was behind the mountains that surrounded us. He could've said something like "A great big exciting world that's yours for the taking." Instead, he joked that there were poison tomatoes beyond those mountains. I still sort of believe that on some level. :-)

[hunter]

32. Ughhh. I remember drinking gasoline too.

I also remember playing with a razor blade, and I was bleeding all over the place before I noticed it hurt.

My poor mom!

[Mr. McD]

10. I have very vague memories of the day my father died

and of being at his funeral. I was 4, this was in 1954. Nothing else comes to mind.

[jus_the_facts]

11. I can remember LOTS of things that happened before I was 5......

....when I was only 3 I took my first puff off a cigarette...remember that vividly....playin' with friends in the neighborhood we lived in...poppin' tar bubbles in the road and gettin' a woopin' for gettin' it all over this outfit my mom had made me...it was a pink checkerboard pattern fabric...a tank top and bloomers....gettin' my arm yanked out of the socket and wearin' a cloth diaper as a sling....bein' in my babysitters wedding at age 3.5...as the flower girl...wearin' a rose colored velvet dress with a black ribbon...and runnin' up to her durin' her vows and holdin' her hand...and everybody laugin' at me....I could go on and on...I have lots and lots more memories from before I stared kindergarden. :)

[LynneSin]

12. you smoked when you were 3?

yuck!

[jus_the_facts]

16. Yep....my mom was puttin' on makeup and my aunt...her sister....

...were yukin' it up...and weren't payin' attention to me...I picked up one o'their cigarettes out of the ashtray and took a drag off it....then dizzy as HELL and nauseous...stumbled down the hall and layed on the couch tryin' not to puke.....sad but true. :smoke:

[histohoney]

13. Lots

Sharing an ice cream cone with, Ready, my dog.

Playing round-up with horny toads with my sisters. Mom would let us us food colours for brands (I always got stuck with green).

My robot Marx, loved it.

Playing "Secret Santa" with our babysitter.

Honest I remember Kennedy's state funeral, what struck me was the horse with the backward boots. That and my mother just saying over and over, "It's just so sad" and "That poor family".

Most my memories were pretty good, I grew up near a creek (Prime kid spot) with lots of kids around. The one really bad memory, the willow tree in the back yard, my mom used the branches for switches, ouch! To this day I will not own a willow tree.

We moved from that house when I was almost 5.

[preciousdove]

15. I missed my only chance to see Santa!

I was just under three and Grandma and Grandpa took me for a ride in their car on Chirstmas Eve and while I was gone Santa came. Instead of being excited Santa had come I was devistated that I had missed him and burst into angry tears. (I was always a mystery to my folks.)
I remember the smell of the old Hudson in the cold and the fresh tree when we got home and the flowers on gold wallpaper in the living room.

[Kahuna]

17. I can remember things back to two years old. I can remember..

teaching myself to tie my shoes at two. I was in the kitchen with Mom while she was cooking. Now, understand. I was born anal retentive and independant. I asked my mother a couple of times to tie my shoes and she ignored me. So I messed around until I got them tied and never asked Mom or anyone to tie them again.

I can also remember falling asleep in the bed inbetween my parents. When I woke up, I would be on the outside. I can remember my confusion at how and WHY I ended up on the outside. :wtf: I'm no longer confused about that.:wow:

[Pithlet]

18. I can remember a lot of things.

One of the more prominent memories is going downtown (Rochester, NY) to celebrate the bi-centennial. I remember going to a Friendly's and having ice cream with red, white, and blue sprinkles. It was the summer I turned 4.

I also remember going to the local elementary to get tested to see if I was ready to start Kindergarten. I wasn't yet 5. I did okay, except during the part where I was supposed to identify sounds, I kept calling the bell sound a "cadish register". My mom had to explain that I meant "cash register". I had a toy cash register that had a bell that sounded just like the one the tester was using. She still marked me down for a wrong answer, and I remember my mom was furious. They let me start school anyway :)

[1gobluedem]

19. The night Daddy ate dinner in the living room

It was the Cuban missle crisis. I was three years old and were eating dinner; our dining room was a nook at the side of the living room. The television was on for the news and suddenly my father just stood up with his plate in his hand, walked into the living room, and sat down right in front of the TV.

My sister and I were profoundly shocked because nobody was allowed to eat in the living room. We were sure he was in for big trouble.

[sybylla]

20. I have a fair number of memories

and the more I think about my youth, the more they come to me.

I have a clear memory from about the age of two and a half of my mom telling me I needed to take a nap and I didn't want to. I didn't feel tired. She said I should just go put my head down a few minutes and I did just that. She got mad at me when I came back out of the room a few minutes later.

I remember my neighbors butchering chickens later that summer. It was the first time I realized where drumsticks came from.

I also remember moving about six months later to a new town about 2 hours away. My mom was driving the car and my grandmother rode beside her. I was too short to see out and because we were in a snow storm, they made me wear my seatbelt. Blue vinyl seats are totally boring after about 10 minutes. I remember that a semi passed my mom and splashed slush on the windshield. For a few moments my mom couldn't see and my grandmother went into a rant about discourtious truck drivers.

I remember walking up the street at my new home to the fairgrounds to see the sulky races. Been in love with horses ever since.

I remember moving again to a house on a lake, the neighbor boys and their collie, Rocky, learning to ride a bicycle and sledding down a huge hill in the neighborhood out onto the ice for what seemed like miles.

I remember being afraid of my great grandfathers. One I could never understand any more than to know he was teasing me, then he would hook his cane around my neck and drag me to him. Scared me to death. The other was quiet and loved to watch boxing. Never mattered when we visited, he always had boxing on TV and a half-finished solitare game on the table. He let me try his chewing tobacco once. Nastiest stuff I've ever put in my mouth.

Odd, the things we remember from childhood.

[MissMillie]

21. I vaguely recall

My twin sister and I spinning in the back yard--arms out and twirling around until we fell to the ground. We would have been about 4.

[ET Awful]

22. I remember the lambs screaming. . . .

Oh wait, that was Clarise Starling.

I remember being in my bed in the top bunk in the bedroom I shared with my brother in our house in Alaska (before the move to Arizona a year or two later). I remember having a dream that the tree outside the house came to life and pushed me out of bed. I woke up sitting in the chair beside the bunkbeds where my mom used to sit to read us bedtime stories.

I also remember being freaked as hell the first time I saw the movie Poltergeist and the scene with the tree. That was one freaky moment to see something like that on screen when my earliest memory was so damned similar.

[geniph]

23. Learning to read, splitting my kneecap, JFK's assassination

and getting hit by a car, although that last one was just after I turned five, so I guess it doesn't count.

My first memory is splitting my kneecap. I'd flushed one of my big sisters' Barbie doll heads down the toilet, and my sister, who was 11, pushed me off the six-foot-high front porch. I landed in broken glass and split my kneecap. I remember the glass, a lot of blood, and much screaming. It was probably me screaming. I still have a hell of a scar, 42 years later. I was two and a half.

My second memory was learning to read. I'd been pestering my mom to read The Cat In The Hat to me for the 7 millionth time. She refused and said, "I don't know why you can't read that yourself by now." I went and sulked, and opened the pages of the book. As most kids do with a favorite book, I'd pretty much memorized the book, and all of a sudden, some connection was made in my brain - I realized THAT'S WHAT THOSE BLACK MARKS WERE, THAT'S WHERE THE WORDS WERE HIDING. I was not quite three. I haven't had my nose out of a book since.

My third memory is November, 1963. I'd just turned four. Something bad happened that they were talking about on the radio and people went to the houses of friends who had TVs (we didn't have one). Mom came home early from work (that NEVER happened), and my elder siblings were sent home from school. Everyone was crying. I cried too, although I didn't really know what a President was, but everyone else was crying, so it seemed like the thing to do. My Aunt Juanita went into the bathroom and did something that made the adults call an ambulance and there was a lot of blood in the bathroom (she tried to commit suicide - Irish Catholic families took JFK's assassination even harder than a lot of other Americans).

I have some vague memories from when we lived in the projects, and a couple hazy memories from kindergarten, which I started when I was four, but those three are quite clear.

[Cleita]

24. My first memory was of breaking my arm when I was two.

It HURT.

[Susang]

25. I remember the Detroit Riots

I was two. All I remember was I wasn't allowed to go outside to play anymore. :-(

I also remember being sick with pneumonia when I was three. My mom set me up on the couch with a little aluminum tray table and I got to watch Sesame Street and Mr. Roger's Neighborhood all day!

[XNASA]

30. Did you participate in the Riots?

You know, like, did you burn anything down?

[Susang]

44. I torched my dolly

Then I set fire to my brother's Lincoln Logs. Boy, was he pissed! :evilgrin:

[CO Liberal]

26. I Remember Going to My Grandparents' Farm For Christmas in 1956

I had just turned 4. We pulled up to the house in my mother's old Studebaker, and the first thing my sister noticed was an electric light hanging over their back door. Electricity had come to Buena, NJ.

Prior to that, my gransparents relied on kerosene lamps and an icebox. But they didn't get full indoor plumbing until 1963, when my father put in a full bathroom and a septic tank.

I also remember when my little sister was born about six months later (May of 1957). My older sister and I spent a week at my grandparents' farm. I helped my grandfather feed the chickens every morning.

[m-jean03]

27. It was the middle of winter. I was barely 2 years old.

I was with my dad, in Michigan, going to the corner store for groceries. The door was off the front of the store for some reason, and this totally freaked me out. I was under the impression that it had sank into the ground. I remember bawling and crying and being so upset by this weirdness. Doors were NOT supposed to be off the building!!

Then, I remember being 2 and 1/2 and after traveling across the country in our silver Nova with the sun roof (I don't remember the trip) finally arriving in Washington and seeing our new house. I guess I have a good memory, but this was a major moment for a little tyke. :shrug:

Good thread, Lynne!

[HEyHEY]

28. I have millions, it's freaky

I remember from about age three like it was yesterday. The one I'll share is my first visit with santa at preschool. It was dark out- the whole thing was at night.I was amazed at his beard and wanted to talk to him but was too nervous. I also remember wanting the a jello cup but not wanting the grape on it.

[hunter]

29. I remember a lot from before I was five...

... and quite a bit from two years or less.

I remember eating "pill bugs" or wood lice, or whatever you want to call them... I remember what they taste like very clearly, but I haven't been brave enough to test that memory.

I also remember workmen digging up the septic tank of my childhood home, and that my mom was terrified that I'd fall into the hole and drown. I told my mom about that years later, and she said "You can't remember that..." and then she got all embarassed when she realized I probably remembered a lot of other stuff from then too.

I remember my great grandmothers' houses. One of my great grandmothers had borders, and I remember how spooky it was that there were rooms in her house that we were not allowed to go into, and strange people we were not supposed to bother.

I remember sitting in my stroller watching gibbons swinging from branch to branch and rope to rope in the zoo. I remember dreaming I was a gibbon, and sometimes I still dream I'm a gibbon.

[TX-RAT]

33. My Josh Randal , Bounty Hunter plastic Winchester.

[TrogL]

34. standing at/under a table wanting hot chocolate

I was shorter than the kitchen table.

[dr.strangelove]

35. I remember having surgery and my grandfather dieing

I had cancer as a child and I remember lots of things about that time. The strongest memory is going to the city (NYC) with my mother on a bus. We lived in Staten Island and took a bus through New Jersey. I remember being on the bus and talking to my mom when I was 3 years old.

My granddad died when I was 4 and I remember the funeral and the burial. Big things like that stick out in my memory.

[Bombero1956]

36. I remember

When I was 3 we went to church at a predominately Polish Catholic parish. One day the head of the parish council and the priest came over to talk with my Dad. I heard them talking to him in hushed tones and him nodding. A few years later I found out what they wanted, we were told not to come to their church anymore(I'm Puerto Rican), because they were afraid we were trying to take over their church. When I got married I had to get a copy of my baptismal certificate, so there I am in the rectory and the woman asked me why I had left the parish, I told her because her parish was bigoted and I wasn't welcome as a non Polish person.

[Red State Rebel]

37. I remember hitchiking to my parents work - age 3

Got in some trouble for that...
I also remember sneaking into the back of my dads work truck when he was home for lunch and riding back to the office with him - age 3. He delivered eggs for a farm and I sat in the back of the truck and tossed one egg at a time onto the road.

[Sequoia]

41. Did you get a whuppin'?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

38. Many!

I can't date the following except that they're certainly before 3 year 11 months -- the age when I moved from Rio to Petrópolis.

- Lying in my crib face up and slightly freaked out by the car lights whizzing by the ceiling (we lived at the 2nd floor by a busy street)
- Beach: the waves. They looked mighty big.
- Beach: sound of an airplane overhead. I would always look up to see the plane; sometimes the position of the Sun made it impossible, much to my frustration.
- Beach: going to a different beach than used to and called it the "dirty beach" (it wasn't dirty; it just had darker sand)
- The statue of Jesus at the top of Corcovado hill, that I could see from the apartment window.
- Fried sliced bologna. I called it "et cetera et cetera". Don't ask.
- Disney and Hanna-Barbera comics. Asking Mom, Dad, and siblings to read them to me. I especially liked "La Brujita" (Magica DeSpell).
- Being offered mineral water (with CO2) and loving it. I still love it.
- Waking up every morning, being taken from crib by Mama, asking "Donde está Papá?" and hearing "trabajando" as an answer. I didn't know what "trabajando" was, only that it kept Daddy away. Bad.
- Cartoons: The Impossibles, Shazzan, Magilla, The Herculoids. I loved to draw the big stone gorilla. For some reason I drew it with four arms.
- Shitty (not for me) car models made of soft bubble plastic, bought by the dozen at street vendors.
- Being informed that we were moving to a city at the top of the mountains (Petrópolis) and picturing a perfectly conical mountain, with a perfectly spiral-shaped road around it and a very crammed city on top.
- Moving. Living room totally empty, we were about to go. I'm shitting in a potty in the middle of the living room. My older sister tells me if I don't hurry up they'll leave me behind. I cry.

And by the way, yes, Spanish WAS the official language at the CyC household. Folks immigrated 5 years before I was born.

Edit: how could I forget this one? I'm in the bathtub (it's horribly hot so I spend most of the day in it) and I suddenly think how nice it would be if the ENTIRE bathroom was a bathtub. I proceed to diligently throw water from the bathtub into the floor withy some plastic thingie (a deep dish I believe). Mom freaks out. Sister calms her down: "He's little, he doesn't know what he's doing." I'm offended. I DO know what I am doing, and I have a PLAN!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. Beginning at age 2, a lot!

Climbing onto the built-in sideboard in the dining room to look out the high windows above it. My mother freaking, because I was walking around among her heirloom china.

Two months before my third birthday, my mother excitedly calling up my grandparents with news that she had just heard on the radio. "Stalin died!"

Sitting on my mother's lap as she paged through Life magazine. I point to a picture. "Who's that?" "That's Senator McCarthy."

My great-uncle comes home from being in the air force in Germany. He brings us a cuckoo clock from the Black Forest and a statue of Jesus.

My first brother is born. I can't go upstairs to see the baby, so a family friend plays with me in the hospital lobby.

I'm sitting on my father's lap, asking him to tell me stories about each of the toy animals I pick up.

At age five weeks, my brother nearly dies from pneumonia and is hospitalized. I hear grownups talking about oxygen tents.

I'm three, and there's a German-American Christmas party, and every child who attends is supposed to perform by singing a song or reciting a poem to get a present. I sing Silent Night in German.

I'm fascinated by the Latvian immigrants who come to visit my grandfather. I make up random bits of gibberish and ask him what that would mean in Latvian. He says, "That doesn't mean anything in Latvian, you big dumb."

We take the streetcar to downtown Minneapolis, and the shopping trip ends with a chocolate malt at Dayton's. Soon the streetcars are replaced by buses.

We take a trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas. The attendant in the bath house gives me a sailboat to play with in the tub. We have a picnic on a mountaintop with egg salad sandwiches. The trailier park where we stay has a farm next door with a noisy rooster. The trailer has a kerosene stove that roars when lit and scares me into hysterics. We happen upon a mass baptism taking place in a river.

I become dangerously ill with some sort of viral infection and am rushed to the hospital, where they stick tubes in my arm. I am scared to be alone at night, so I start yelling that I want breakfast. When I'm feeling better, the nurses wheel me around the pediatrics ward to meet the other children, and I see a girl in an iron lung.

We visit some parishioners who have a cabin on Lake Superior. A bear comes out of the woods while we're there.

I'm only at about age four by this point. I think I'll stop now.

[Sequoia]

40. Thought about how life began

I thought maybe it started with a wind and swirled around until it formed a spec and then the spec grew and grew

[politicat]

42. wow. I have tons.

My first one is really early, under a year. I remember being in my crib in my room, late in the day, so late summer, most likely - which would make me around 8 months old, and seeing the room as really, really blue. (It had blue walls, I was supposed to be a boy.) With dusk coming down, the light was really intensely blue, and I remember finally understanding the concept of "Blue" at that moment.

A few months later, at Christmas, I was disgusted that the fake popcorn and candy and cranberry garland my grandmother had for her Christmas tree was fake. The thought was something to the effect of why make fake strings of popcorn and candy when there was so much of the good, real stuff laying around? I would have been just shy of a year at that point.

I also remember my sister coming home from the hospital when I was three and a half, and making up stories to myself about being someone else's child before that time, and of playing with a little girl in long dresses... but there were no children in my neighborhood. My grandparents think I was playing with the ghost of my great aunt, who died in that house when she was 12 of nephritis.

We were in England and India for about half of the time I was under the age of three, and I have some pretty clear memories of both of those places. I remember my Cockney nanny swearing and remember picking it up - my mother was studying for her CPA exams, and so needed help - and that the furniture factory across the street in Calcutta used banana oil to treat the furniture. I am still not fond of bananas.

Pcat

[Darranar]

43. At least two come to mind...

my brother chasing me around a room, and a light in the closet in my bedroom.

Several others from when I was four and five; too many to recount.

[King Of Paperboys]

45. I thought we lived on the equator.

Don't ask me why, but this was a long-held belief. I was taught otherwise at about age 6.