What is your earliest childhood memory, and how old were you?

[ClareA]

Mine is of being about two and sitting on our coir doormat, and feeling that it was prickly on my bottom.
Also of tipping my toy Post Office's cardboard coins down the loo, flushing it, and wondering why they didn't come back again.
The scary sound of the Civil Defence siren when it was tested nearby.

[slinky.kate]

sitting on the armchair and playing with halfpennies,about 2/3 years old and i only had a vest on.

[Mamyalynne]

I am boring in this one, first day at school must have lived a humdrum (but safe and happy) life until then.

[mrs.chappie]

I was about 2 or 3 .... I climbed up the dollytub of boiling water and fell in, elbow first. I still have the scar on my elbow.

[Jan1957]

I get really uncomfortable when people ask this question because I don't remember much of my childhood at all and it makes me wonder why.

[tinkerbell23]

My mum and dads wedding when i was three! Before , getting my hair done...and in the reception playing with toys...i do remember being in my cot though similar age, mabye two? And crying cos my mum went out for the night and gran was watching me haha x

[mrs.chappie]

I remember a doctor coming to see my mum when she was expecting, he was carrying a black bag. I thought he'd brought the baby in his bag.

[puternut]

Would have been five, six or at most seven.

Went to school which was a 100 yard walk and for some reason got there so early we were the first there.


Got totally freaked out because no-one else was there

[ClareA]

I hadn't expected such moving answers! What can I say?

[mrs.chappie]

Clare, it's a good question. I think it's quite nice to reminisce.

I remember my first day at school. The nuns were wearing those big, white hats that they used to wear.

I was scared stiff of them and cried my eyes out. In those days they could be quite cruel and I got caned for it. It wouldn't be allowed now.

[ClareA]

Although I didn't go to a convent school, mrschappie, I do remember the first day being a bit of a shock. Nursery schools weren't usual in the mid-1960s, so it was the first time I'd been away from home. I remember my Mum's sister, Auntie Sally, asking me whether I was looking forward to going to school, and replying 'No, I'm looking backward to it'.

[netibiza]

I remember sitting in my push chair in our garden and a boyscout called Brian Kent (friend of my brothers) looking at me through the hood which was up!

[Mosaic]

being pushed in my high pram by my mum who was (as ever) looking cross. The pram hood was up and I was harnessed in but sitting up, and I was playing with some curly cellophane clowns and fishes - I think these were hong-kong tat that came in stuff like christmas crackers. You put them on your hand and they curled up. There was very little other entertainment in the 1950s.

[starone]

It was warm and sunny I was sitting on the pavement outside of where we lived (Mrs. Bush's front room - four of us, dad, mum, my sister and me - they don't know what poor is nowadays) with a man - obviously my dad.- watching the sparrows come right up to us. Strange, I still like watching the sparrows.

[douglas9401]

My the baby brother had been in a bath on the living room floor. I was left alone for a minute and wondered if I could stand on the edge of said bath.
I couldn't, at least not while the water remained in the bath. :)
I'm sure it gave me a little more patience for the things kids get up to than I have for everything else in life these days.

[TheOtherHalf]

I still have the scar on my knee from falling off my dads crossbar whilst he was cycling along. I would be about 4 years old

[starone]

Forgot to say, I was three - we got a council house just after and moved to what seemed wide open spaces.

[rowanwitch]

being in hospital about 5 years old... being held down for injections...and also sitting in bed with fuzzy felt only seeing my mother on sunday as she couldn't get there on week day evenings as she worked

[tiggerblue10]

When I was 3 and still living in Cyprus during the 1974 conflict. I remeber army jets flying overhead as my mum and me were running across the road to a neighbour. The funniest part of it was remembering that I was carrying a bag of monkey nuts!

[andy-hughes]

i remember being in pram, outside by the back door. It was a sunny day, and i could hear rubble being tipped out of a barrow about four houses away - they were still buidling the estate, we were one of the first families to occupy our new house.