Childhood memories.

[Gastines]

I am writing an article, not for general publication but for personal research concerning peoples first child hood memories. I would be most grateful if anyone of the members would be happy to share their earliest childhood memory with me please? The crux of my enquiry is to find out exactly what type of incident a person considers their earliest memory and whether it is either a happy one, sad one, traumatic one etc. Any information I receive will of course be completely confidential and remain in my sole care and be used purely to give an overall view of the type of memories most likely to be remembered in early childhood. I do not wish to be given any names or personal details, purely the type of memory recalled by the participant and if they wish to relate more details of what it actually was, that would be a bonus of course.

         Thankyou for taking the time to read this, Yours faithfully, Mrs Gastines.

[Tresco]

I've got quite a few memories from when I was still in a cot/wearing nappies.

I started trying to describe them but it was turning into a stream of babble, so i'll send you a pm instead.

[Teamedup]

I would have been around just three years old and Dad and I were sat on the bus, we had been swimming and I know that we did that regularly, just can't remember it starting. I remember clearly Dad asking me if I wanted a little brother or sister and I said 'no'. Next memory is of the night brother was born at home when I was just over three years 4 months.

 

 

 

[Cat]

Similar first memory for me too.  I was 2 years 10 months old when my little brother was born at home.  My early memories are more like snapshots and snippets than a continuing picture.

I can remember looking out of the window to see the midwife's car, an eggshell blue Morris Minor or Volkswagon Beetle (obviously I didn't know at the time what make of car it was, but I remembered the shape, and the colour quite clearly).  I can remember that my mother was confined to her bed, and had a little handbell that she would ring if she needed anything.  I can remember the midwife weighing my baby brother in a muslin nappy suspended from a big hook (I didn't like that hook, it scared me).

I also remember that there was a monster who lived, at the time, on top of the hot-water tank in the airing cupboard.  My father, carrying me up to bed, opening the airing cupboard door (next to my bedroom) every night so that I could see with my own eyes that the monster was not crouched on the tank waiting to get me. I can still picture that monster, with his long spindly legs tucked up underneath him, and his head squidged down onto his shoulders, squeezed into the little space above the water tank, so I guess that must be my first memory of a nightmare!

                       

 

[Tresco]

Well I sent a rambly pm to Gastines,

but TU, your post made me laugh, because I have no memories whatsoever of my younger brother up to the age of him being about 7 (similar age gap to you and your brother). It's like I have blanked him out.

I can remember my oldest sister pulling the leg of my plastic pants away, feeling relief from pain and seeing a red line on my leg (aged 22 months or something like that), I think that has to be the earliest memory for me, and along with it goes my first impression that someone specially cared for me, there being so many children in our house to attend to.

[PossumGirl]

Strangely, I remember lying in my bed, which faced the wall next to the door.  My mother used to leave the door partly opened, and I remember the light on the wall making a pattern that seemed to me to look like a train.

PG

[Dick Smith]

I remember laying in my pram in the garden and a chicken perching on the handle.

It was a black rooster. It wasn't until some years later that I realised that my mother was a Voodoo Queen and that the scarecrow wasn't really my father.

I remember being taught to read by my mother writing in the condensation on the kitchen window, waiting for my father to come home for lunch. I was small enough for her to hold me on her hip. Not now, though. We've got an extractor fan.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Breaking my leg aged 3. I can still vividly recall the red fluffy

blanket I was wrapped in and the smell of disinfectant inside the

ambulance.

[Ty Korrigan]

I remember playing outside with a friend in Helston when I was 3 and crawling through a hole in the fence into a wheat field.

Some time later an R.A.F Sea king from Culdrose was hovering overhead directing the police to the spot where we where playing.

It was my first ride in a police car although not my last and my first in a Mini!

Wish it had been the Helicopter....sniff...

[chris pp]

A timeless moment, just a visual memory. I was obviously in my pram and there were two faces looking at me from above, both female, one of whom I know to have been my mother.....  That's it.

Chris

[Russethouse]

 I remember jumping out of my pram when my aunt told me the squeak it was making, was a bird in the pram !

It was one of those big coach built jobs with a huge space under where the baby lay accessible from under the mattress, my mother used to wheel sacks of potatoes home in it.

[Dick Smith]

Was it a Restmor? There is actually a Restmor Way near here where they were made (or built). They went out of business when the buggy arrived, I guess.

[Ty Korrigan]

There is a place in Guisley West yorks called Restmor ave...It is the same town that makes those posh prams I forget the name of...

[Dick Smith]

Are they still making them there?

Nope, just Googled it and the spelling is different...

[Gastines]

Were those posh prams called Silver Cross and Marmet. They were the Rolls Royces of prams and they made dollies prams too, I just wasn't lucky enough to ever own one, either full size or dollies size, sad, isn't it?

     Keep up with the replies please, Mrs Gastines.

[Russethouse]

I think it was either a Silver Cross or a Pedigree. I remember when I was about 6 years old asking for and geting a twin dolls pram, that was certainly a Pedigree ! I was really thrilled.

I had always wanted a brother or sister and the year after we moved house, when I was 7, (much to everyones surprise)along came my sister. In those days Mums were kept in hospital for two weeks and in any case I had a cold and wasn't allowed near, even when she came home I had to wear a mask when I was near her (a nurse friend bought one for me to use) It made no difference as I took one look at my sister and said 'but I wanted a pretty one !' Needless to say all my friends queued up to tale the baby for a walk and I was not the least bit interested.

Asked to contribute a name for the baby I chose Gladis, which luckily my parents rejected. !!!  After a lot of thought I decided on Rosemary after Rosemary Clooney (there goes my claim to be 25 in another thread ! [:$])

My sister had a Silver Cross pram but it didn't have that handy space at the bottom, just the rack that fitted between the wheels.

[Viv]

When I was about 2 or 3 ,my grandad gave me an old talking doll ( pull cord back of neck job) but it had holes in its chest for the noise to come out of. Scared the poop out of me!

[Russethouse]

Oh go on - who remembers Tressy ? Or even the cut out dolls from Womans Weekly ?

Crikey - I'm making myself feel old !

 

[Dick Smith]

Or Torchy the Battery Boy, Rag Tag and Bobtail and the Pingwings...

[vervialle]

I was four years old and tried to iron a table cloth when my mother left the ironing to answer the door, I burnt a big hole in it, she went spare, smacked me and sent me to my room,I climbed out of my bedroom window (it was a bungalow) and walked round to the kitchen singing ( walking back to happiness) I got[:'(]another smack and sent back to my room.

[Dick Smith]

It was probably the singing that did it...

[Russethouse]

I remember going to sleep in my mothers bed (I was probably about 4 )and was woken by her smacking me ! Apparently she had thought I was lost and that the gypsies had taken me ( don't ask !!!) She had come to the bedroom to change her stockings before going to report me as missing at the police station.....says something about her priorities, your child is missing and you are worried as your stockings are laddered ![*-)]

Of course I was really upset becase I hadn't done anything ![:|]

I remember Rag, Tag and Bobtail, Picture Book and Andy Pandy, Bill and Ben and there must have been one other?

Picture book was Wednesdays I think.

[Dick Smith]

Were you thinking of Muffin the Mule?

(Oh my god, how low have I sunk?)

[Blanche Neige]

omg I think I had a deprived childhood as we never had a T.V.!

We did listen to Childrens' Hour on the radio, on the home service.

One of my earliest memories.... (I would have been under the age of seven)

...............cutting out dolls' clothes on the settee and accidently cutting the settee covers my mother had made. I don't remember her being cross though.

[Christine Animal]

Muffin the Mule!  Dick, I would never have thought of him if you hadn't mentioned it....  Not a first childhood memory, but we did have a television, the first one bought specially for the Queen's coronation, one of those big boxes standing on it's own with a tiny screen.  For some reason the knobs were at the back and for adjusting the picture my father had to go behind and twiddle them and keep asking us if that was better.  Once we were watching it and the picture kept going wonky and suddenly my little sister, very tiny, came out from the back and said "Is that better?".

We lived on an island on the Thames at Shepperton and I could row at the age of three.  I fell in once and remember just a sort of grey going past, then my father pulled me out.  Our bungalow was off the ground in case of floods and I can remember my mother going underneath when I was in the bath and tapping on it.  (Sorry, I should have explained that the bath was sunken in the floor and you had to lift up a sort of trap to get to it and fill it up with a pipe from the washbasin.. great luxury in those days).

Hope this helps ! ...