I'd have to say it was when I was 7 and my best friend and I got caught in his basement looking through his grandfather's porn magazines. My mother was not happy.
I am aware of things that happened before I was 7, but only because of photos and home movies. I can't guarantee I would remember any of these events without those visual aids.
My clearest old memory is from when I was 2 1/2. I don't think it's an accident that this is when I was learning to read...I imagine that "organizes" the brain a little.
I had a dream...it was a floaty, amorphous kind of dream, but I remember that the dream had a Phil Collins song in it (I am almost sure it was "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight"). When I woke up, I was in my crib, and I remember getting the idea to climb out of it to go see my parents. That was hard work! And I could barely reach the doorknob, either.
There are other memories I have that may actually precede that, both of which were of my very first experiences learning to read. I remember a book meant to help little kids get used to the idea of sleeping in a "big-kid" bed. Which was exactly where I got the idea to climb out of my crib that morning. I also remember a cloth alphabet book. These may have even been before the crib-climbing incident.
I definitely remember a LOT from when I was little, compared to most people I know. When I told my parents what I remembered, they confirmed the age I was at the time. And that was indeed the age I was when they started teaching me to read, because I was having difficulties acquiring language. They said once I started to read, I was much better able to speak. To this day, I think in written words first, with a "voice" only second, and even then, not much of a voice.
I assume it is the sodium bicarbonate that helped the pain.There was one magic ingredient however that my grandmother added to the wash. It was called a blue bag. It was a small muslin wrapped bag of synthetic ultramarine and sodium bicarbonate. Ultramarine is a very blue, blue and strangely enough (probably because it absorbs yellow light) clothes came out fantastically white. Not that I cared much about that of course. Its great magical use was on bee stings. Whenever the inevitable happened, one of our mothers or grandmothers would produce a wet blue bag, place it on the wound and … no more pain. None of us knew why of course, but we were grateful for this piece of passed down lore.
My earliest memory is my sister's birth, I was 2 1/2. I clearly remember holding my dad's hand when we visited my mom at the maternity ward and the baby incubators.
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