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.

exactly what Jessica said. It is hard treating mac because of this. He saw things and his 2-4 yo brain imagined it happened to him. Or he saw stuff in films (they had a tv and vcr at some point) and remembers those things really happening. or or or. a million possibilities and we will never know what was reality.

I can see that, except I like reading about flawed and mutable memory and other things that tell us we're not as smart as we think. I'm weird, I guess.

It's super interesting but really hard to think about, so I kind of need it spoon fed to me to be able to take it in at all. And when I can wrap my mind around it, it's alarming - not so much that we aren't as smart as we think we are, as we aren't as real as we think we are.

My earliest memory is of being at my grandmother's house when my sister was born, and it's almost certainly something somebody told me about rather than an actual memory - it's not even from my point of view, it's more like watching a film of myself.

I've found that the stories I retell are the memories I remember. My earliest memory (it's real) is of my mom and I spinning off a snowy road and some dude coming over and yelling at her like it was her fault. I was three, I think. A lot of what I remember is stuff my brother and I reminisce/tease each other about to this day - like the time he was riding his bike at dusk, got distracted watching bats, and rode into a tree. Heh. Or when he ruined the "airplane" I had made at nursery school* by painting it with watercolors. Or mildly traumatic stuff like when I stepped on a crayfish in bare feet.

I remember lots and lots of random stuff from before I was six.

* looking back I'm astounded that they let us use hammer and nails in nursery school. Hey, my first construction project!