My earliest memories are fake, I"ve learned, and there is a huge amount of stuff I don't remember from high school and college. Meh.

My earliest memory, was as a late two or early three year old. My parents got me a Gingerbread duck as a special treat. "Is that a real Duck?" I asked. "Yes, it is" my brother's girl friend told me.

I said something along the lines of "Wah, I can't eat a duckie". "I'll take care of it", the goilfriend said, and she ate the cookie.

A little bit later it dawned on me that it was cookie shaped like a duck, and I turned to her indignantly and said to her 'you lied to me. That was not a real duck'. She replied, "now you know, never trust me when cookies are at stake."

So I guess my first memory ends with me saying to myself "Gar, that was really stupid".

I swear I remember being in the crib, but who knows if it's real or not...

I remember a car accident we were in when I was about 2 years old (Mom didn't believe me that I remembered it, but then I mentioned a detail she had totally forgotten about). Then, running away from my mom who's trying to get some eyedrops into me (I still hate drops), which would have been 4 years old. Next, it's laying down to take a nap in kindergarten and also teaching a classmate how to tie his shoes. Then, lots of memories of school from 1st grade.

About that same time, I recall lying in bed, listening to Mom and Dad argue (again), and hearing Dad say, "Maybe we should just get a divorce." They didn't actually separate until I was out of 5th grade, but when they told us about the separation/divorce, I wasn't surprised and hadn't been since hearing that argument.

My earliest really vivid memories are from around second or third grade-- I remember being really upset because my third-grade teacher put my sticker collection in the trash (I got it back!), and I have a really vivid mental picture of the games room at my summer camp where I first read A Wrinkle in Time. But there's not a whole lot from before that, and the stuff that I remember best is not always super pleasant.

My first memory was of my grandma sneezing and the dentures flying out of her mouth. I don't remember the visual, what I remember was that I was very shocked, because I knew my grandpa had dentures, because he had one of those denture mugs, and took them out every night, but my grandma was really secretive, and made sure she just took them out, cleaned them, and put them back in.

My mother says I can't remember it because I was about one, and at this point, like tommy, I might be remembering the remembering.

I actually remember a lot more stuff than most people do about my childhood, but it may be that because I spent a lot of my free time reading, and still read those same books, it is just easier to remember the first time I read something.

I have very vague memories of my preschool, but no idea how accurate they are.

The problem with any early childhood memories is that kids are extremely suggestible, and will "remember" vividly experiences that (a) they've been told about (b) happened to other people (c) they saw on TV (d) etc etc etc. It's why getting an accurate report of an event out of a young child is next to impossible - any kind of leading question, no matter how vague, will change the way they remember whatever it is you're asking about.

it is just easier to remember the first time I read something.

My most distinct early holiday memory is from Christmas 1972, when I was six-almost-seven. We were at Gramma's for the usual holiday bash, and my godmother (Mom's youngest sister) brought me my present, which was the boxed set of Little House books. I remember being breathless that all of these books were mine-all-mine!! Mom had to take the box away from me and make me play with my cousins.

I don't have any memories of my parents interacting with each other before they separated, and they separated when I was EIGHT. This makes me sad. (But my father was in med school and residency for the first 6 years of that, so I guess he was not home a lot.)

Every time someone says the word "arrest" I always get a brief flash of a policeman giving someone CPR on a teevee show that I must have seen when I was a child, like Chips or something. It must have been the first time I heard the word Cardiac arrest, and what with the policemen involved, I was very confused. But I always have that little memory flash up.