What is the oldest memory you can remember?

My earliest memory dates back to my 3rd year of existence, before kindergarten and while we were still in our very first apartment in Canada. I went out to the balcony one day and started talking to this other kid who was as young as me in the suite adjacent to ours. we lived in the nook corner area of the apartment, so our suite was 90 degrees perpendicular to our neighbours. Somehow we our clothesline was hooked to their balcony too so he'd tug on it every once in a while and I didn't like when he did that. He went in to watch TMNT and I was impatient waiting for him to come out to the balcony again.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Eleo

But who's to say that they aren't developed prior to birth or soon after?

Because the developments are environment induced.
Without an environment in which the cortexes can adjust their discerning abilities, they remain in their relatively inert state and certainly don't function like that of a more mature individual.

Life in the womb does not seem sufficient enough of an environment for the brain to develop these skills, as the brain's interpretive abilities are dependent upon dynamic changes to function, and the womb is a relatively static environment.

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Just because they exist in an alternate form doesn't make them inaccessible. Like I said, there could be a potential to uncover these memories using some scientific method. It's possible that there could come to be some device that extracts and translates these memories into some form that could be interpreted by the brain in its current state.

Yeah, that may be so. I am not one to shoot down technological possibilities at all; however the amount of effort needed to do that seems to me to be vast. ('sup complete mapping of the brain in the past)
Ultimately, this seems highly unlikely, and very impractical.

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Eleo is right. Our brains store memories as impressions, but not necessarily just sensory impressions. Our mental faculties re-assemble this information into meaningful "memories." So it isn't actually remembering, its more like reconstructing a situation based on little bit of data.

Much of this information is still stored, but lies outside of what we are able to consciously recollect. Hypnotism works to some extent to allow people to fish out these memories (although considering they are hypnotised, it doesn't do a terrible lot of good )

But theoretically you should be able to "remember" everything that has ever happened to you.

This is the whole reason why brainwashing will work - we don't record anything like a video camera, we store contextual clues in a manner of speaking, and if one or more of these clues are changed, our brain reconstructs the memory differently.

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I don't recall what age I was when this happened, but I always have this vivid memory stored in my brain. It's not even a special memory, as I recall getting my hair cut by my mom when the doorbell rang. We ran downstairs to greet the tall man at the door, who turned out to be some family friend. He gave me and my siblings some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and sat down on our fluffy, white carpet with his large shoes still on. That's about it.

I still haven't figured out who this man was.

I was speaking idiomatically.

i remember when i was around 4 or so, one of my babysitters got us locked out of the house and i think we got back in somehow using a wire clothes hanger...

then another time when i was around 4 and had diarrehea and all i could eat were crackers and drinking sprite...and learning that sprite was one of the most disgusting drinks out there...i used to let the soda go flat before i drank it...

me racing my half brother down the backyard...

tearing up a phone book...

sitting by the window with my aunt, who used to live with us then, and counting to 100, waiting for my mom to get back from work...

running on our patio on a sunny day, tripping, and scraping my knee wide open ^^;;

How ya doing, buddy?

I remember trying to move around my precious bucket of toy cars, shoving them, having a whinge, and successfully pushing them down the steps. I bet I cried. I don't remember crying, but I would have. My precious bucket of cars, how could this be? Must have been sometime before pre-school, as cars were out and TMNT were in. TRENDY TRENDS.

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My earliest memory was before I was one year old when I went over to my fathers house to visit him. I was able to walk with the aide of someones hand, however I didn't walk on my own (according to my mother until I was 9 months old I couldn't walk unaided... I ran before I walked, go figure). He drove an orange car. I didn't see him for 12 years after that. As a small child (age 2-4) I would often ask my mom who the man with the orange car was.

I have many memories of my life when I was extremely young. I have a few strong memories from before I was one year old and a good number of them form 1 - 2 years old. I'm lucky in that I have a very good long term memory.

How ya doing, buddy?

Just like a few other people here, my first memory is of the day my brother was born. I was playing by our fireplace (with Legos I think), with my Aunt Gail watching me. I remember her saying something about going to the hospital to see my mother and my new brother. I was around 3 at the time.

I also remember about a month later when my parents let me hold him, and I dropped him.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

One of my earliest memories was when I was probably about 3 or so. Someone was trying to rob our house, and I remember standing at our doorway and yelling at him (I don't know if he was even out there at the time). Didn't take long for my mom to shut me up. xD
Another one was when I was in 1st grade. I fell off the monkey bars and probably broke my wrist. All of the other kids wanted to get the nurse, but I wouldn't let them because I was afraid she would tell me that there was nothing wrong--and I didn't want to feel dumb.

I'm not sure whether I was weird or just stupid. o__O

There's nowhere I can't reach.

my oldest clear memory was when i found a black widow spider in a small flower pot when i was 4. i didn't know it was deadly so i picked up the pot and was playing around with the spider and almost touched it but decided not to.

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I remember being naked in a hospital bed. I saw my mother and father waving at me through a window in the door. The old man in the bed next to me was wearing a greenish/blue sheet, tubes shoved up his nose, and wires that ran from under his sheet to a machine. The machine next to him was beeping in a rhythm. I remember a nurse walking back and forth. A large black lady, about as tall as the window in the door that my parents were looking through. I was scared and wanted to be with my parents. I cried my eyes out, but they wouldn't come. They just kept smiling and waving. The machine stopped the rhythmic beat and instead, just started screaming a flat note. The large black lady ran out of the room. The man who was laying there, then turned his head to me. His eyes partially opened. I stopped crying. Something inside me told me to just observe the old man. A team of people flew through a set of doors; some with machines in their hands. The machine didn't stop the screaming flat note. I just observed. After that, my memory cuts out.

My mother told me I was in the hospital for a hernia operation when I was about 20 months old. That was what I could remember before surgery. I could go on with after surgery, but that wouldn't be my earliest memory.

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I like how I was such a nerd even when I was only two years old. My father got home in 1992 and brought the SNES with him to surprise us all. Although the SNES wasn't my first contact with videogames, playing Super Mario World with two years was just awesome. Nothing to worry about, just killing poor turtles. The next thing I can clearly remember was travelling to Sweden. My father bought me a little car on a ferry and I also remember walking through some awesome forests with fluffy moss.

I was speaking idiomatically.

My earliest memory was a tabby cat at an aunt's house, and playing toy cars with my close cousins. I asked about it to my parents once. Apparently I was 8 months old or so at the time.

Very interesting to note that I can remember that back.

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My first is a really fleeting impression of being on top of some stairs. Between 1-3 is the closest I can pinpoint there. Also, my aunt was giving me a bath. The knobs for the faucet were shaped like crystals. You know, faceted.

FELIPE NO

I remember a sunny summer day, my father was on the veranda smoking a cigarette, my mother was in the kitchen, and there was some jelly-candy on the table. I have no idea why that is the first thing I remember relatively clearly, as there was nothing even remotely interesting in that scene, but there you go. I know I was at most three years old at the time, as we moved to a completely different part of the country when I was three.

Also, the "indoor smell" of hot sand always reminds me of the playground that was outside our old apartment building. But I think that might be me actually remembering a later time when we revisited the place and there was that sand smell and I remembered that that smell always used to be there. Or something.

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Being in a sling on my mother's back while she was walking around a street market in Germany. Considering I was one when we left for the USA, it's probably pretty old.

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My earliest memory is either when I was a little younger then 3 or about 3 and a half.

I was playing with blocks trying to construct a castle.

and then there is the time when I was able to see my sister inside of my mothers stomach.

That's when I was living in Germany. I remember so much from back then that it's hard to say how old I really was. But I know the age is close, since my sister is four years younger than I am.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

My earliest memory comes from when I was three. It was sunny. Around 10am on a weekend, I think. Mum was folding some washing in the master bedroom and dad was brushing his teeth.

I was taking a shortcut across the room via my parent's bed when I slipped and fell, smashing my head on the corner of the left bedside dresser. I remember suprise followed by pain It's kinda comical when I look back on it though.

I was damn lucky I didn't loose an eye that day, and I still have a faint scar just below my left eyebrow as a reminder.

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When i was about ~2 years old.. when i was stuck between the legs of a highchair :P

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I forget how old I was, but my earliest memory was pretty grim. My mom was pushing me and my younger sister on the swing when the chain broke and sliced up her hand something awful. I remember her carrying me and my sister while running back into the house, and us getting covered in her blood.

Nice, eh?

I was speaking idiomatically.

The oldest memory that I have is actually quite blurry in my mind. I don't remember when did that actually happen, but when I confirmed it with my mom, she said it happened maybe when I was only 2 or 3 years old.

I was standing in front of a large black and white picture of a man, in a room so large that many people were there. Later when I asked my mom about it, she said it was at one of my uncle's funeral... Quite oddly, I don't even remember what my uncle looked like since he passed away when I was so little, but for some reason, I remembered the day of his funeral...

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Running around taking all the toilet paper off the roll and unraveling it wildly down the hallway as a 3 year old.

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I remember when I was three or four years old I was visiting my uncle's house. I was outside on a hot, sunny day doing something (I presume playing) barefoot when I happened to step on their sheet metal cellar door. I used to have a picture of a huge blister that developed on my foot, but when I was 6 or 7 I thought it looked gross to the point that I threw the photo out.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Earliest I can think of is about a year and a half. We were about to have a garage sale, and my mom sat me down in a pile of socks and told me to sort through them. I doubt I was doing any of it right, but it was proabably to get me out of her way.

I also remember peeling the wallpaper off the walls in that house.

Jam it back in, in the dark.