Have you ever wondered why you can remember so little of your childhood? Apparently as you grow, develop and learn new things the memories kind-of get overwritten so we can hardly access them anymore.
I also found this quote to be interesting:
Our earliest memories are often insoluble blends of genuine recollections, narratives we sponged up from others, and imaginary scenes dreamt up by the subconscious.
I tend to have a good memory and seem to remember a lot more of my childhood than most of my peers but even then, many of the memories are associated with strong emotions (negative and positive).
My earliest memory - or what I can deduce as my earliest memory is that of having a nightmare and waking up in my cot (so about 2yrs of age) - it sounds ridiculous but it is one memory that, weirdly, hasn’t faded. I can still vaguely remember the nightmare itself!
Mine was a midnight visit we had to our house of a wandering cow - the fooker escaped his pen a farm over and wandered onto our property. My sister and I woke up hearing funny noises and we ran to get our parents. It was this weird ticking sound at our window, we had no trees near the windows tho.
We were young, living on a small holding just outside of pietermaritzburg. Parents came down to look, and when they peaked out the window we all almost died from the fright of seeing this big ass cow tapping the window. I was about 3 or 4
Its perfectly understandable that the only early childhood memories that sticks with a person are those of trauma, or something painful, either physical or emotional. Those memories shape the person that we become, either for the best or the worst.
One of my earliest memories are the same. I remember accidentally stealing a Cream Soda from a shop. I wanted to know if my dad would buy it for me, but he left the store. So I ran after him with the can of soda in hand. I might have been like 3 I think.
One of my earliest memories was quite traumatic…
i was about 3/4 and my parents were divorcing and we went to go live with our grandparents who happened to live just up the road form my parents house. my dad had visitation rights (i think) or he just came by to see us etc and then he punched my granddad and grabbed my brother and ran for the gate, leaving me behind.
ive never gotten over that incident and after that i learned ppl always have ulterior motives.
ja hey, it severely dented my relationship with my father, but he has proven on more than one occasion that his sons are more important to him than his daughters, after all we “will get married and be taken care of by our husbands, which is why he needs to take care of them better”.
im am surprised that i am not a more messed up individual thanks to the “stellar” role models i had growing up
I had a discussion about this with some people a while back, and what confuses me is how old people remember they were.
I have a lot of memories from when I was young, but I honestly can’t tell you if I was 3 or 6 when it happened, so I have no idea what my earliest memory is.
My dad also thinks like that - hence he is pissed at me for still being single. And now I am not allowed to move out on my own cos its not safe for girls to live alone
The oldest memory I have is one where I was causing kak as usual. We went to the fair in town and one of the stalls sold these Rambo replica knives. It had a handle you could screw open and then there were survival items inside. Like matches, bits of tinder, rehydration tablets, a little piece of wire you could use to saw things off etc. On the back of the handle was a compass. I begged my father for it. (I have been hunting and working on the farm a lot so knife safety was something I was taught at an early age) So my dad caved an bought it for me. A few weeks later i remember hiding during a game of hide and seek behind a little table in the corner next to the curtain of the sliding door. As I was sitting under the table with my knife and I screwed open the bottom and the sudden urge to light a match came over me. A few seconds later and the curtain caught fire. Then the table and pretty much the rest of that part of the house. My parents were not happy.
