How far back can you remember in life?

ChicagoBlue2

Veteran Traveler
Premium Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2013
Messages
12,688
Reaction score
1
I can remember up to 25 years back; after that, not much.

What about you?
 
I can remember 63 years ago what happen to in my childhood . When you get older your long term memory can be very good but your short term memory may not be so great.
Do I know you???
 
This is going to vary widely as we have so many different ages here.

A better way might be to ask how old were you when you can first remember something.

I have a clear memory from age two when I stepped out the front door and slipped on ice and hit my head really hard. I remember being surprised as I didn't know about ice before that.

And the year when I was 2 was 1959.
 
Last edited:
I don't know to what age I really remember. Both my dad and an aunt took a lot of photos and movies. Thus, I am not sure what is from remembering what actually happened and what is from remembering what I saw over and over, from the movies particularly, being shown.
 
I was 2 when I remember being scared of something. I was in a wool Navy suit and this guy kept ducking under the hood of some sticks. Of course, it was a huge still camera mounted on a wooden tripod and this guy was trying to get some stills of me.....:lol: This was in 1945...
 
Last edited:
I was 2 when I remember being scared of something. I was in a wool Navy suit and this guy kept ducking under the hood of some sticks. Of course, it was a huge still camera mounted on a tripod and this guy was trying to get some stills of me.....:lol: This was in 1945...

Which tells me you are about a year younger than I am.
 
I was 2 when I remember being scared of something. I was in a wool Navy suit and this guy kept ducking under the hood of some sticks. Of course, it was a huge still camera mounted on a tripod and this guy was trying to get some stills of me.....:lol: This was in 1945...

I can remember being afraid of a horrible woman wearing a big hat in my bedroom when I was 3 yo in 1949 . That woman was a lamp with a radio .' She' gave nightmares when I had a fever. I wonder how many people have memories of the 60's here.
 
My oldest memory is impossible. The house we lived in at the time we moved out of at about a year and change after I was born. I remember seeing Dad's footprints in the snow out the back door and I tried to follow them. I got stuck. I remember being stuck in my Dads footprint in the snow. I remember the terror of being unable to get out. I remember the color of the house, the fence, the endless expanse of snow. Impossible memory but it still seems real to this day.
 
At 2 (1965) I remember rolling down 3 flights of stairs at home. After that, my next memory is when I am 5 and my brothers had a visit from the police. They were 6 & 8 and playing with my father's Zippo lighter and burned down a cow pasture. Luckily, no buildings went down and no cows were there.
 
I remember some stuff from when i was 2 but then i am 20 so idk if that makes a difference
 
I can remember after being run over by a car at age 4 yo I was in the back seat of the a car and dad had me on his lap and I had army blanket on me.
This was the only time my dad held me on his lap . :(
 
I remember April 15, 1998 vividly. Why? Because this was when multiple tornadoes hit my former hometown at 10 at night, and destroyed 47 homes, and damaged another 80. Miraculously, no one was killed, and rumor has it the first twister to hit was a 1/2 wide, and flipped over a CSX train carrying hazardous chemicals.

Cleaning up the hazardous chemical spill from the train cost millions, and part of the reason why then President Bill Clinton declared my home town a federal disaster area.
 
Last edited:
I believe if you had some form of tragedy when you were very young you are likely to remember those events more. Example tornado, being abused, being hurt or serious changes in your family like divorce. I have memories from before kindergarden but most of my big memories come from living through a huge earthquake and how I lost my sense of security in my very own home. I had a fear of leaving my mom when I went to school and always wanted to stay close to home.
Very few pictures were taken then. Today kids have tons of pictures and their memories are saved via computer etc.
 
I believe if you had some form of tragedy when you were very young you are likely to remember those events more. Example tornado, being abused, being hurt or serious changes in your family like divorce. I have memories from before kindergarden but most of my big memories come from living through a huge earthquake and how I lost my sense of security in my very own home. I had a fear of leaving my mom when I went to school and always wanted to stay close to home.
Very few pictures were taken then. Today kids have tons of pictures and their memories are saved via computer etc.

Oh, yeah. Except the fact that I have survived tornadoes 4 times, the last one being that year, and I have also had the misfortune of seeing a monster tornado at a young age, as well. Not many people can say they've seen one-- I've seen three, two of which were monster twisters.
 
I was so happy not a care in the world until I was about 5 or 6 years old when I went to the hearing Catholic school for the first time. I do remembered sitting in the classroom by the window and I was looking out the window and love the scenery outside. Then I looked around at the students and the nun in the classroom. I could not understand anything in the classroom so I went back to looking out the window. Then later probably after the class was finished, the nun teacher took my hand and went out to walk to my parents' house. The nun told my mother that I was not responding anything in the classroom and thought it would be better for me to stay home instead of coming to school. So that was that after my first day in a Catholic school. My mother told me years later about that.

I never got any recollection on my memories of my childhood except only a few memories when I was still a child at 5 years old and onward. Like Jane mentioned about photos, my mother showed me photos of my growing up looking so happy. No home movies. I still have trouble remembering when I was in elementary school in Minneapolis, even high school. I do remembered my protest over oral method which I wanted to have ASL. As I grew older, I remembered some of them. But that's life. I like the photo parts where I get some history on how I was growing up and into my adult life. Photos are good. :)

It is hard to remembered through the entire lifetime.
 
My life has been split two ways-- from age 10 or 11 until age 16, when I was living in the rual countryside of Illinois, I did not have a very productive life, until I moved to Cook County in 2000. From age 17-21, I felt like I was in jail, because the group home I used to live in up in Northbrook, IL had extremely strict rules, and when I became of age at 21, and moved to Chicago in 2005, I felt like anew and free man, but I wasn't used to such independence, and it took me several years to figure out to get a move on, which I did in 2008, and now live in an unsupervised setting since 2010, and my life today couldn't be any happier. I have found peace, and have the will to keep living despite certain avenues I do not have experience with.
 
I think since I was like 3 or 4 years old? That would be 30 years ago to answer your question, and the earliest thing I can remember was hysterical I guess. It was during an Easter gathering at my grandparents house. Us kids were out looking for hidden easter eggs, but I wasn't enjoying myself one bit. See, my grandmother made me and my sister's dresses out of some scratchy material that made me want to tug at it. So I had enough and right then and there took it off and ran about in my panties and all. It was bliss but my grandparents eeren't amused! LOL
 
Ah, earliest memories. Mine would be riding the Greyhound to Lockport, IL, in 1988. Haven't ridden it since then. :shock:
 
I remember stuff since i was two but i think the most vivid memory would be of when i was 4. I remember crying a lot and then by bother coming to me. He didnt say anything, he just hugged me. Since then i saw him as my heroe
 
Back
Top