I used to be afraid when the nearby church bell rang (very weird tone) - but I remember waking up and a spider was coming down the ceiling right at my head. I wailed! My aunt came and got me. I suspect I was 2 or 3 years old.

Contractors were still working on the house, so we couldn't go inside yet, but what toddler cares about a silly house anyway! The lot seemed HUGE (sorry YUGE) to a 4-year old.

My mom says she was only a month old. My sister has always been a little nutty.

The family joke was that he swears he remembers being smacked on the tush when he was born...

I remember the nurse bandaging my doll to look like me and the Doctor carrying be around the ward.

(a German short haired pointer and Weimaraner-- Yogi and Trouble). I wanted to play/sleep with them and Dad wouldn't let them in the house.

Too short to reach the gate latch or I'd have been in there snuggling.... Rather, Mom drug me back to the house.

Fighting in their bedroom. I must have heard something because my memory begins with me standing in the doorway and seeing the black streaks of eye makeup streaming down my mother's face. Not trying to seem like a dark, attention seeking person, but that honestly is my first memory. Well it's either that one or me burning my hand on the bbq grill and being amazed at the giant blister on my hand. I turned out ok, though.

We were in the car and I remember seeing what I now know was a bridge overhead, so we were driving somewhere. Have no idea my age or why I remember it.

falling an severely cutting my hand and bleeding. I remember being taken to a Doctor for stitches. I have no idea how old I was at the time - but still drinking from a baby bottle should be a clue. No older than 2 y/o. The hand was stitched up between the thumb and forefinger. I was given a rubber ball to play with because the Doctor was worried if I favored it too much - I might lose some sensation and use of that hand. Everything turned out alright as I'm typing this response. I'm going to be 70 y/o in August of this year. So we're talking sometime in 1949 - 1950.

That was a traumatic remembrance. I also recall a funny incident.

We were in my parents first apartment. I vaguely remember what it looked like - but the living room was connected to the kitchen. Mom made jello and Dad was topping a dish with whipped cream. As he was attempting to learn how to use the whipped cream can - he depressed it too hard and the cream shot across the kitchen into the living room where I was sitting and it hit me right in the face. We all had a good laugh. I'm thinking I was probably between 2 and 3 y/o at the time.

Playing with toys like a plastic apple and a plastic banana. Nothing linear or coherent; just isolated images.

There were toadstools out on the edge of the yard. Just as a storm was ending, my father took me by the hand and said if we were really quiet, we could see fairies under the toadstools, where they were sheltering from the rain. Power of suggestion, hallucination, whatever, there they were, holding hands and dancing around the stem of the toadstool. I'll never forget that moment.

my dear mother quietly woke me and led me to the west window that looked down on the street corner. The 2,000 watt incandescent bulb in the street light just across the street illuminated a constant swirl of huge fluffy snowflakes that had already blanketed the ground. No snowflakes were visible anywhere outside the cone of light around the light pole.

The next day, I was surprised to see snow everywhere; not just under the street light from which I thought the flakes had fallen.

I hope Mom knew how special that memory would be. I miss her.

Called for my mom and called again and again. No Mommy. I cried a bit then started thinking about what to do since I was evidently going to be on my own now. I remember looking at the door, realizing it was closed and that it was pretty high up and I wasn't sure how it opened. But first I needed to get out of the crib. The top bar came up about to my chin so it was going to be quite a climb to get over it and it was a l-o-o-o-o-o-ng way down. I stood there, trying to muster up the courage to try climbing out when my mom finally showed up. She had been visiting with a neighbor in our apartment building and thought I'd still be sleeping.

I remember seeing my grandparents sitting on a bench in front of the huge globe of the world. I was so surprised they were there. I thought we just happened to run into them.

which of the early memories is earliest.

Eliminating those that have my sister in them and do not have the tree that Hurricane Hazel took down leaves:

Newborn puppies squealing
Holding up yarn scraps in my hand for a Titmouse to grab and it tried to get a piece of my hair instead.
A fall I took from the ladder of the swing set and had serious trouble breathing for a short time
Being pulled in a red wagon up and down the street by my elder brother because I couldn't walk very fast.

At 3 years old, I remember vividly, standing by our garage, telling my adopted Mother "I love you Mommy!" She had a mean face on and said "I'm NOT your Mommy and your Father isn't your Daddy and your Brother isn't your brother!" " Your real Mother didn't want you and gave you to us.!" Needless to say My adopted Mother was a disturbed woman whose own Mother left her and her two sisters when they were very young. She stayed mean and cruel her entire life. Luckily, I am married to a wonderful happy man and now...everything is OK. He and our 3 cats make everything "all better".

...you are in a nurturing relationship now.

We have a lot in common...our cats are named Bussie the Snowman,(he's sweet and mostly white with rusty spots and he's a polydactyl ...then there is Binkenstein (huge beautiful black cat, and a real character and then Sally Jane a little fat black silly thing who loves to chase toys. My husband and I have had over 50 cats over the years. Loved them all....so how did you get your "name"?

Don't remember the pain, but I do remember screaming like a demented banshee. The cast was pretty cool. Lots of signatures and "what a brave little girl". Yeah, I was something of a drama queen.

And Mom, quietly calling me, trying to get me to come to her. The "spotted kitties" were spotted skunks (we called them civet cats) who lived in a pile of bricks Dad had gotten to build Mom a rock garden of some sorts. I used to play with them all the time since they were friendlier than the big tom cat that was my sisters' pet. I was probably about two and a half or three.

That cat never liked me much - when I got my tricycle I accidentally ran over his tail. Mom got him treated and the cat came home with his tail all wrapped up. When Mom took the bandages off, half his tail fell off and poor Boots was a short tailed cat from then on. I felt so guilty about that.

Years later one of the skunks fell into one of our garbage cans while we were at school. Mom tried every veterinarian in town but none were willing to try to remove the scent glands. Mom thought it would make a good pet for me, but when the vets turned her down, Dad took a long pole, tipped over the can and let the skunk loose. Before it left the skunk vented its displeasure at being tipped out. That end of the house smelled like skunk for months and months - the first time we had ever smelled it in our yard even though the skunks had been there before us.

About the same time I was playing with the skunks, Dad built a front porch on our house, concrete with concrete steps. I tripped on the steps the first time I tried to climb them and cut my shin to the bone. I still have the scar and can remember how fascinated I was with the hard white thing in the wound. My oldest sister had gotten a "Visible Man" for Christmas and she showed me what the white thing was and explained how it made my leg work. That's why I had a good understanding of the skeletal system and internal organs before I got to kindergarten.

Him pounding an inner wall and saying "Double Construction."

Wolf

and wondering why are they invisible in the shade, just inches away? I remember it was wintertime, maybe 1954, because the beam of sunlight I lay in felt so comforting.

In my bedroom, I had both a fish tank and a table to have tea parties (not the 2010s kind) along with mini plastic dinnerware. My sister and I were having a tea party (she was 1.5-2) and I was very proud of the fact that I could get water from the bathroom sink and bring it to the table.

When I was out getting water, I came back into my bedroom to see that my sister had put a fish out of the tank on each plate. The fishtank went away shortly after.

being set on fire by my brother. think I was around 4.

The scene: summer afternoon, warm - we are outside play while my dad cut the grass.
His gas can was by our back porch. We had a huge back yard and among the things in the yard was a burn barrel.

My mother would burn papers and cardboard every day as one of her chores. She lit the fire, went back in the house. I was around the fire. My brother got the gas can and poured some on me - kablooie!

I screamed and fortunately my mother heard and came running rolling me in the grass with a blanket that was around. I remember she crushed me. She was screaming at the top of her lungs.

had some small burns. I was pretty lucky.

I was under two. I remember the crib in the hospital, and my father getting me out of it. (I ate some Zud). I don't remember the stomach-pumping part, just being in the huge crib.

I was only two. But my memories begin there.

I sat in my highchair in the kitchen with the radio on.

I think they must have played it quite a lot because my memory is something like "why that one again?"

13 years later, I got a housekeeping job at the same hospital. The first time that I walked into the room it was deja vu. It hadn’t changed much at all.

Swimming in big pool at Scott AFB age 2 and 1/2, being hauled out by lifeguard

And definitely the one that my parents always claimed that I couldn’t possibly have remembered— I remember Joseph McCarthy ranking on the radio and thinking he was the scariest person alive. I think always credited this memory for turning me into a liberal. I couldn’t of been more than three maybe four at the time.

Strange that I remember it.

adventure. Believe it or not, Cannabis is actually helping my memory some.

Woke up in my crib one evening to the sound of my parents laughing with some friends. Stood up and looked down the hall to the light in the living room. The sound of my stirring got the attention of our new puppy who was then about 2-3 months old whose running down the hall startled me and I started to cry. Remember thinking, why are you crying, that is a puppy. Parents came and settled me down and closed the door.

I had just turned one. I remember seeing fast moving pavement and getting yanked back into the car.

There was a body in an open casket surrounded by candles.

My mother tells me they were having a wake for a man who lived below us.

She thinks I would have been about three at the time.

I don't know how I ever got talked into that! But, Pops (Ptolemy XII Auletes to you commoners) pretty much insisted, and you all know how that goes.

Take it from me, kids, you may think marrying your sibling is a good idea now, but it just really isn't.