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any joyous, loving, laughter filled moments from your childhood?

What age have you the first memories of?



I was asked this question last night and was really shocked to realise I can't remember any, I had a normal childhood (define normal :rolleyes: ). We did things as a family, we went on holiday once or twice a year. I know I was spoilt as the baby of the family, my brother and sister took every opportunity to tell me that.

I have no recollections of anything really bad happening, so I wonder why I've blocked out the good times.

When I was younger, my dad and my uncle owned a small motel, restaurant and gas station in a seasonal vacation spot up in northern New York State, right on the Canadian Border. They would run it from April till the end of October. They would stay there the whole time, and we would go up for the summers.

It was fun. My cousin and I were able to walk to Canada..and cross over the border to a tourist site that was a short distance over the border. The border guards all knew us, as they would come to the restaurant on thier breaks. So they would stop us and chat for a minute.

There was alot of fun stuff there.

I can remember being told I was having a brother or sister so I would have been 2 years old at the time. That's my earliest memory. The next memories although I'm not sure of the order were having stitches in my head when I was just 3, "I Wanna Hold your Hand" by The Beatles and getting up just before 7am every morning just to hear "Downtown" by Petula Clark being played at 7am when it was No.1 in the charts

I can remember my sixth birthday and I got a lovely lilac coloured PJs. I thought I was the bees knees and the thrushes ankles.

I can remember getting a baby doll for christmas one year and having great fun with that.

Unfortunately my Dad drinking too much ruined most of everything and I can't remember a whole lot. :-1

I wish alcoholics would actually see the damage they do to kids and how a whole life can be destroyed for years.

Sorry Betty for ranting in your thread.

I can remember being at my aunts in the summer. That was always fun. :-4

jennyswan;521293 wrote: I can remember my sixth birthday and I got a lovely lilac coloured PJs. I thought I was the bees knees and the thrushes ankles.

I can remember getting a baby doll for christmas one year and having great fun with that.

Unfortunately my Dad drinking too much ruined most of everything and I can't remember a whole lot. :-1

I wish alcoholics would actually see the damage they do to kids and how a whole life can be destroyed for years.

Sorry Betty for ranting in your thread.

I can remember being at my aunts in the summer. That was always fun. :-4


Rant away, I don't mind! :-4

I remember back about 3 or 4 years old, playing in the backyard and wanting to drive my brother's pedal car. He wouldn't share, and I remember getting mad.

Betty Boop;521299 wrote: Rant away, I don't mind! :-4


Thanks Dahling!! :-4

My first memory is when I was just 3 - my mum was heavily preggers with my brother and I remember putting my cheek to her tummy to feel him kick.



When he was born I used to love to hold him but one night I dreamed that I hadn't supported his head like I was supposed to and his head fell off and rolled under the kitchen table! I can still remember the feeling of panic.



My next strongest memory is when I was 5 and my brother was just two, mum had just run him a bath and called down to him to come upstairs, he didn't want a bath so started to cry but what none of us knew was that he had got hold of some peanuts and as he inhaled to start to cry he started to choke on the peanuts. I had to run to get a neighbour who was a nurse and dad and her bundled Matthew into the car and made a mad dash for hospital. He had an emergency tracheotomy and pieces were removed from his lung. I remember going to see him when he'd been moved from intensive care, he was this tiny tot in an adult bed on an adult ward, unable to talk but his face lit up when he saw me and he reached out to me for a hug. He's now a strapping 36 year old father of two who wouldn't dream of giving me a cuddle!!

Imladris;521734 wrote: My first memory is when I was just 3 - my mum was heavily preggers with my brother and I remember putting my cheek to her tummy to feel him kick.



When he was born I used to love to hold him but one night I dreamed that I hadn't supported his head like I was supposed to and his head fell off and rolled under the kitchen table! I can still remember the feeling of panic.



My next strongest memory is when I was 5 and my brother was just two, mum had just run him a bath and called down to him to come upstairs, he didn't want a bath so started to cry but what none of us knew was that he had got hold of some peanuts and as he inhaled to start to cry he started to choke on the peanuts. I had to run to get a neighbour who was a nurse and dad and her bundled Matthew into the car and made a mad dash for hospital. He had an emergency tracheotomy and pieces were removed from his lung. I remember going to see him when he'd been moved from intensive care, he was this tiny tot in an adult bed on an adult ward, unable to talk but his face lit up when he saw me and he reached out to me for a hug. He's now a strapping 36 year old father of two who wouldn't dream of giving me a cuddle!!


Wow! I bet that was a scary time, I dare you, next time you see him give him a hug.

The earliest thing I can remember is fracturing my arm doing a cartwheel off a step, I'm guessing I would have been about seven or eight. My sister was looking after me at the time but she didn't believe that I'd really hurt myself. I have memories of lying on our doorstep crying in pain for quite some time, I remember her telling me to shut up and then dragging me upstairs for a bath. She was making me get undressed and I was sobbing the whole time, she was shouting at me for crying then she suddenly went deathly white when she saw my arm, I can't remember but it must have swollen up, I think it must have been two hours since I'd actually done it. Everything was a bit blurry then, a neighbour took me to hospital where they x rayed it and then decided I had to have an operation, cue me to freak out! We had an hours drive to Truro as they couldn't operate at our local hospital. I can remember continuously saying 'Don't leave me Mum'.

The next part I really remember vividly is being back on the ward after my op, Mum told me she was going home I sobbed and begged her to stay with me, she said she would. A little while later she told me she was going to the toilet, she never came back.

Of course she came back, the next afternoon to pick me up, but I guess to me at that moment in time she'd abandoned me.

Betty Boop;521737 wrote: Wow! I bet that was a scary time, I dare you, next time you see him give him a hug.


Actually i think I will - just for the hell of it! Remembering this has made me realise just how glad I am that he survived what was a horrible thing for a little 'un to go through

Betty Boop;521739 wrote: The earliest thing I can remember is fracturing my arm doing a cartwheel off a step, I'm guessing I would have been about seven or eight. My sister was looking after me at the time but she didn't believe that I'd really hurt myself. I have memories of lying on our doorstep crying in pain for quite some time, I remember her telling me to shut up and then dragging me upstairs for a bath. She was making me get undressed and I was sobbing the whole time, she was shouting at me for crying then she suddenly went deathly white when she saw my arm, I can't remember but it must have swollen up, I think it must have been two hours since I'd actually done it. Everything was a bit blurry then, a neighbour took me to hospital where they x rayed it and then decided I had to have an operation, cue me to freak out! We had an hours drive to Truro as they couldn't operate at our local hospital. I can remember continuously saying 'Don't leave me Mum'.

The next part I really remember vividly is being back on the ward after my op, Mum told me she was going home I sobbed and begged her to stay with me, she said she would. A little while later she told me she was going to the toilet, she never came back.

Of course she came back, the next afternoon to pick me up, but I guess to me at that moment in time she'd abandoned me.


Hugs to you - that must have been horrible to think you'd been abandoned. Thank goodness hospitals are better at letting parents stay nowadays.

Imladris;521742 wrote: Actually i think I will - just for the hell of it! Remembering this has made me realise just how glad I am that he survived what was a horrible thing for a little 'un to go through


Good, please do it, I'm sure he'll be shocked but he'll love it really. :-6

Betty Boop;521744 wrote: Good, please do it, I'm sure he'll be shocked but he'll love it really. :-6


It will get him back for laughing when I kissed his son under the miseltoe!!

Imladris;521743 wrote: Hugs to you - that must have been horrible to think you'd been abandoned. Thank goodness hospitals are better at letting parents stay nowadays.


It's actually very scary, to this day I still feel let down by my Mum, I need to address it and let it go.

It's set up a pattern though, I think that everyone that loves me is going to abandon me at some point. So my defense is don't let anyone in.

I have quite a few distinct memories of sights, sounds and emotion when I was two, but no sound. I've no idea how that works, some senses sticking and others not. I suspect that what I actually remember, though it appears as a simple enough memory, is remembering those things later on and that there's a single remove from the original. There are events which happened only when I was that age, and locations which didn't crop up later on, which is the only way I can date the memories since nobody had introduced me to calendars back then.

The emotion I recall from then is invariably terror. The first time I cut my hand, quite badly, with an open razor. The time when I was still unable to walk but had crawled to the second-from-the-top stair and - to my own senses at least - found that it was angled downstairs and falling would be the only consequence of negotiating it. The time I came face to face with an untethered sheep which had wandered from the back field into the garden where I'd been left alone for a while. The only memory not imprinted by terror was the lead-up to bleeding all over the bathroom floor, actually getting out of my cot by lifting a loose slat up and sideways, squeezing through the gap and falling to the floor. No terror in that, just satisfaction at achieving what I'd tried to do, but I doubt it would have stayed with me but for the immediate aftermath.

Incidents from when I was five all involve acute floods of embarrassment at social gaffes. Most events that have stuck in my mind over the years since then have been similarly occasioned. Between five and eight is when what I am now was being laid down, I think. I've not changed a great deal since then, just added layers and complexity on top of that basic personality. By eight I was dreaming the same nightmare every time I slept and it was still occasionally recurring into my twenties.

I remember that my Mom nearly died when I was 5. She'd been ill at home for a quite a while and my Nan kept looking after me and my brother. Eventually she spent a long time in hospital with a "Mystery Illness" Not entirely sure what it was but I know it had something to do with a major reaction to Penicillin.

I will never forget screaming in terror as two Ambulancemen carried my Mom downstairs strapped to a stretcher. I didn't think I would ever see her again. I wasn't allowed to visit her in hospital as she was so ill and I think they also didn't like kids on the ward.

Upstairs I have a letter that I wrote to her. Although I was 5, it's still typically "me". It reports that my Aunt is looking after us and "tonight we had pork, a custard and a doughnut". Some things just never change.

Uncle Kram;521752 wrote: I remember that my Mom nearly died when I was 5. She'd been ill at home for a quite a while and my Nan kept looking after me and my brother. Eventually she spent a long time in hospital with a "Mystery Illness" Not entirely sure what it was but I know it had something to do with a major reaction to Penicillin.

I will never forget screaming in terror as two Ambulancemen carried my Mom downstairs strapped to a stretcher. I didn't think I would ever see her again. I wasn't allowed to visit her in hospital as she was so ill and I think they also didn't like kids on the ward.

Upstairs I have a letter that I wrote to her. Although I was 5, it's still typically "me". It reports that my Aunt is looking after us and "tonight we had pork, a custard and a doughnut". Some things just never change.


:wah: :rolleyes: :yh_hugs