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After looking at really old pictures of myself over the weekend and spending a few hours with my girlfriend's 6 month-old nephew, I spent some time thinking about the stuff that goes on inside a very young child's head.

I'm not exactly sure how old I was when I started forming lasting memories, but I think by considering them relative to other memories I was probably hovering around three to four years old. Most of my oldest memories are of things that I wouldn't consider to be developmentally important or really significant in any way. My mind just chose to record them, and presto. In fact, some of these memories include the feeling that, at the time I formed them, I specifically decided to remember what was happening.

Without further bullshit, my earliest memories.

-Laying on the floor in my kitchen. A ceiling fan rotating slowly. Cobwebs in the corner.

-My mother crying after discovering that my brother and I had taken wine glasses out of a box and sat on them in our diapers to break them.

-Rain at night. Being carried up a staircase in a laundry basket with some clean clothes and a robot toy that would talk to me.

-Riding in the backseat of a car. A steep hill to my right. Driving maybe too fast around a turn. My dad yelling, "Hold on, Foodaradasakee!!"

-Riding a bigwheel all over the goddamned place with an older guy named Mike

And, earlier still (is this possible?), a vague recollection of waking up in a crib and being confused/frightened, of seeing the moon out the window, of seeing a mobile above my head, and of enjoying the feeling of laying against a cool wall.

Let's hear some more.

I remember lying awake in bed at night with the moonlight shining in my bedroom window, thinking about the day's events and experiencing these little epiphanies. I would think, "This is it. This is my life. There's a whole big world out there and I'm alive and there are so many things I'm going to experience in my life." After a few seconds a strange, floating feeling would come over me like a surge of adrenaline, but more sublime.

During the single-digit ages I used to get that feeling often. I even had it once or twice more during my early teen years, but then it stopped.

It's been a long time since I felt that way, but I still remember what it was like.

A psychologist once told me that what I was doing was basically transcendental meditation. I thought about trying to learn some of those techniques to recapture that feeling, but I have no time for that kind of hippy-dippy bullshit.

My earliest memory is of trying to make some cheerios sink in a bowl of milk.

Also, some time around then, painting the wall of my crib with poop, and what happened when my dad came in.

Colonel Panic wrote:I remember lying awake in bed at night with the moonlight shining in my bedroom window, thinking about the day's events and experiencing these little epiphanies. I would think, "This is it. This is my life. There's a whole big world out there and I'm alive and there are so many things I'm going to experience in my life." After a few seconds a strange, floating feeling would come over me like a surge of adrenaline, but more sublime.

Beep Beep Beep

JamLifeIntoDeath wrote:-Laying on the floor in my kitchen. A ceiling fan rotating slowly. Cobwebs in the corner.

The kitchen... shit; I'm still only in the kitchen

The first thought I can remember was about "Big Brother." I was trying to figure out how they could see through the TV screen. I was 4.

Listening to my Dad's copy of Telstar by the Tornados when I was 2.

My earliest memory is waking up after an 18th birthday that I don't remember.

I can remember as far back as 2, before my sister was born.

I must have been no more than three, and I was at the entrance to the block of flats we lived in with my Mother. I found a badass toy truck on the step, but my Mother told me I couldn't take it because it belonged to some other little kid, and it wouldn't be fair.

That's the earliest concrete memory I have.