telophase | So...

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So...

...as it's a sleep-deprived Friday and I am desperately trying to stay awake, I need entertainment.

Tell me your first memory.

My very first memory is of a house we lived in when I was about 2 or 3. I remember walking (or crawling - it was low to the floor) and peeking around the door of the bathroom and seeing my dad sitting on the toilet.

That probably explains a lot of things about me.

Second memory - same house, there were visitors over and I was in my room with Mom, who was sitting with me til I fell asleep. Someone in a house along the street was banging on or hammering something, and I remember standing on my bed to look out the window and wondering what they were doing, who they were, and which house it was coming from.

Third memory: moving to the house across the street, pulling my red wagon piled with stuff.

Fourth: falling out of bed in the new house.

Fifth: standing outside on the driveway next to our VW van thinking about moving to this very faraway, strange place called Tanzania (so I must have been 4).

Sixth: sitting in the Piper Cub that the director of the Seronera Research Center and his wife flew to come pick us up from the Nairobi airport, as he banked around to show us a giraffe and some zebra (Mom and I were in that plane, Dad was in a two-seater that someone else flew).

Seventh: outside the Director's house, as he pointed at something and said it was a hyrax. I thought he was pointing at this cow or buffalo skull, and when we went around a corner and looked back I saw the skull (obviously, a similar one) on the other side of the wall and thought it had moved, so I thought hyraxes were mobile skulls for a while. Which is pretty damn scary when you're four, let me tell you.

After that, they jumble together. I've got a number of memories of Africa, but no real way to order them, as very few of them have specific things like moving that I can date them by.

(ETA: There's been a few new readers since I last posted about Africa: my dad was a wildlife science grad student, so we lived in the Serengeti National Park for two years, from when I was 4-6, on the Seronera Research Station as he did research for his PhD.)

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Wow, very clear. My first memory is of a windy sandbox during playtime at preschool, with a bunch of mosquitos. My second memory is of lying the same afternoon on our old green sofa, now long gone, and having calamine lotion dabbed on many mosquito bites. :( 2.5-3yo range.

One memory I'm glad I don't have is an event my mom told me about - I was probably about 1 year old, playing outside, and she looked up and found me standing in a pile of fire ants, screaming my head off. :D

In Africa, I managed to blunder into a column of siafu - army ants - but my dad saw me and had my clothes ripped off and was picking ants off me in about three seconds flat. XD I suffered no bites. (If you're in an area with army ants, there's no modesty whatsoever - you hear someone shriek and see clothes being flung every which way as they engage in the Army Ant Dance. XD)

Aiyiyi. They sound very, very efficient!

I am not honestly sure which of the jumble is my first memory, so I'll pick the first clear one that's more than just a fragmentary image:

I'm a toddler, probably not quite three, and we're in a motel near a freeway, by the pool. I am several feet away from my father, and for some reason start running toward him and (predictably) slip and fall into the pool. I sink down what looks like a long way (a full foot below the surface!) before I twist around to face up. The world is a weird aqua color, and the figures above me are all jumbled and distorted, and I kick-and-paddle up to the surface, and only when I grab the concrete edit of the pool do I start crying.

According to my parents, this happened in Indianapolis, on a cross-country drive back from a summer at Berkeley. It was a strong enough memory, I refused to swim for several years, until I finally took lessons when I was nine -- and my only pre-Japan memory with any kind of narrative.

---L.

My very first memory, as far back as I can remember, ( I was three.) was of my Aunt's wedding on Halloween. My cousin and I were the flower girls and we had matching poofy, white (itchy as all get out) dresses...But the main difference were the wings that were bought to go on our backs. There were Angel wings and Butterfly wings. We fought over those wings so hard, I can't remember who ended up what, but it was somehow finally settled and the wedding was awesome. Chess cake with playable chocolate pieces for the win.

Also, hope to see you at Akon!

Also, hope to see you at Akon!

You, too! I should be in island D in the AA, provided they haven't rearranged since I last checked. :D

Yay! My friends managed to get a swanky hotel room *in* the Sheraton this year.

Woo! We're in the Westin, but we always stay there due to elevator congestion in the Sheraton. :D

They got one of the executive sweets, and they said, "Oh! It has *three* beds!" I just kind of sat there and stared for a bit, because I'm used to sleeping in the bath tub at conventions xD... I died of joy, just a little.

We managed to get a corner room once. Only had two beds, but the room itself was twice as large. We *could* have plied more people in, but there were four of us already and we liked the space. XD (That's how I know I'm a grownup now: I do my best to avoid hotel crash rooms if at all possible! XD)

There's only six people, it's going to be *so* nice *_*

I remember snatches of things from when we lived it Canada, from age 2-4.

- I remember rolling down a couple of stairs, and being aware of the amount of browns and yellows in everything around me as Mom came running to get me (we had a small set of stairs that went into the living room area, which was indeed brown and cream... both my brother and I managed to fall on those stairs without particular damage)

- I remember a steep hill on which the playground was, so it was quite a workout getting up there. Made for some fun sledding once the snow fell though

- When we were moving back to the states, a party was thrown for my mom. She had three cakes... chocolate, double-layered. One was green iced, one was yellow iced, and one was pink iced. Does this tell you much about the priorities of a child? :D

A memory I DON'T have but wish I did - apparently Mom tried to get me to play the violin at age 2, a la the Suzuki method. I apparently could play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", but otherwise didn't take to it. Mom thinks it's because we didn't do the activity daily.. only every few days. My parents still have that tiny violin.

Does this tell you much about the priorities of a child

Damn straight! XD

(P.S. I finally managed to get to the post office this morning and sent the DVD back. Thanks!)

Sweet!

Mine's easy: when I was born we lived in the hillbilly mountains of New Hampshire, miles from anything, on a bouncy mountain road. I don't remember anything at all because we moved by the time I was 1, but my dad drove me up to see the house for shigs one time. I was probably 14. As we were leaving, we drove over one of those bumps in the road that makes your stomach lurch - and I remembered it. I totally remember that feeling, in that place. Bizzare.

The next earliest was visiting a family friend, I was between 1 and 2: they had a bowling ball sitting on their stairs and I thought it looked like a face.

This was at the house we live in until I was four. I think I was around 2 in this memory. I was playing in the backyard and got my foot caught in the picket fence. I cried and cried until a man working on building a nearby house came and got me loose.

Something I remember but don't know if it happened. I was on top of the slide of our swingset and a snake was coming up the ladder. I think it was a dream, because in my memory the snake is coming up the rungs rather than the post.

I've got one of those that I'm not sure whether it's a memory or dream, too. If it was true, I'm pretty sure it would have happened before Africa, as I've had it for a very long time and think it would have a stronger feel.

Basically, I'm outside a structure, either a house or a barn, but probably more of a barn, with an old woman and a boy a couple of years older than I was. There's a sort of crawlspace lined with hay that goes from outside the barn, where we were standing, to the inside somewhere. The boy got to go in and crawl through it, but the old woman wouldn't let me, as I was too small.

The main reason I think it's a dream: I have no idea who these people would be. It *might* be a vague memory of one of my grandfather's aunts and one of my many distant cousins that I never see. Huh - I just remembered a couple of pre-Africa memories: in a house at some holiday time, fighting with other kids over who got to wheel my grandfather's aunt's wheelchair into the dining room, and then being carried by Dad at a funeral, possibly of the same aunt, but my grandfather had a *lot* of aunts, and looking into the coffin, which had the top part of the lid open, and wondering where her legs were, since all I could see was her torso. XD

I'm sitting in an airplane. I have the window seat. My mother is sitting next to me, holding my sister, A. A. is still quite a small baby, so I must be less than 3 years old (there is 22 months difference in our ages).

We're passing through clouds. My mother must have said something about rain coming from clouds, because I ask her whether clouds would feel like a wet sponge, if I could open the window and grab a piece of one. She explains that no, it would be like trying to grab a piece of fog.

I should explain that my childhood home was just up a steep hill from the Maryland portion of Rock Creek Park, and thick fog was not uncommon.

My uncle had muscular dystrophy and died when he was nineteen and I was about two. I have one memory of being at my grandparents' house and seeing him get out of the wheelchair-accessible van they had.

I have a couple memories of the Christmas I was two and a half (and I know the first memory comes before this, because my uncle was already dead by that Christmas). We were over at my great-aunt's house and one memory is of me and my aunt and cousin playing with a box of toys on the floor in the hallway.

The second memory is later in the day after we'd unwrapped presents. I got two sets of Colorforms (http://www.retroland.com/pages/retropedia/toys/item/2306/). They were large sets, both shaped like a two-story house. One was Holly Hobby and one (which was my favorite for years) was a Disney haunted house with Mickey and all the other Disney characters. I was playing with that one in my great-uncle's office for a while (there's actually a picture of me (http://www.megchan.com/scans/me/2ndchristmas01.jpg)) and then I moved out to play with it on the brick steps going from his office to the den and a piece slipped through a crack in the bricks. I was devastated, which is probably why it stuck in my head so vividly.

Another memory which I think is from that Christmas is of a man coming door to door to take photos. He took a picture of me holding a teddy bear and sitting in my little rocking chair in front of the Christmas tree.

I have quite a lot of memories when I was two and three, so it becomes pretty hard to sort out after that.

You just made me remember another pre-Africa memory. It was a Christmas, and there was an old woman there, probably one of the aforementioned grandfather's aunts, and I hadn't grasped the concept of presents being intended for specific people yet, so I grabbed one and unwrapped it. It turned out to be a MAgic 8-Ball, which I thought was awesome and wonderful and then my mom took it away from me, as it was for somebody else.

I never got another one. :(

Cruel!

Yes! Not that I want one now, but as a kid, it would have been awesome. :D

I think it had to have been the Christmas I was 3, because I think I could read the answers and I learned to read when I was 3, but by the next Christmas we were in Africa.

They're quite handy actually! I keep one on my desk at work and use it to answer stupid questions my coworkers ask me. (Like, for instance, "Are there staples in this stapler I'm holding in my hand, half a room away from you?" Much better to reply with "Don't count on it" than "Open it up and check, you moron!")

My first memory is of sitting with my arms wrapped around my knees on a patch of gravel at preschool, waiting for my grandmother to come pick me up. I was being sent home early for punching out a boy who purposely scratched up my precious Mickey Mouse watch. Apparently I was quick with my fists as a kid - there's a story (which I don't remember happening) of me at four years old telling the same grandmother "Put up your dukes!" when she tried to make me leave the park before I was ready.

My first memory is being just a month or so shy of three, watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from the window of an office belonging to one of Dad's friends, and wondering when Santa would show up so we could go home.

My first memory is of sitting up one end of an old style pram (way before buggies became all the rage) near the handles as my mum pushed it along the path near our house. My brother was lying down in it under the hood because it was a warm, sunny day and he was quite a small baby so I must have been around 2 years old (there's a year and 3/4s age gap between us).

My second memory is of clinging desperately to the side of a stone wall at the bottom of the garden at my granddad's house and yelling/ crying for my mum and dad who were on the other side of it.(I don't remember actually climbing over the top of the wall, but on my granddad's side it was barely a foot tall - on the other side it was a 6 foot drop!)

My third memory is only a couple of hours after the second. I don't remember falling off the wall or how I came to be at the hospital, but I remember being in an x-ray room with my mum nearby. I'd had a lucky escape from almost impaling my head on a wooden stake sticking out of the ground, but all around there had been junk and broken glass so my parents took me to the hospital to make sure I hadn't done anything really serious. Turns out I didn't even have any cuts.

My memories then get all jumbled up and I can't really say when they happened. Though some that stick out is standing on the pipe that ran around the wall in the downstairs toilet to look out of the tiny window that was at "adult" height - and having the pipe break from my weight (it was maybe only half an inch in diameter) and suddenly having an indoor water feature I was sure my dad was going to kill me over. There's also the time I was a bridesmaid as a kid, I remember being really bored sitting on the pews through the ceremony (as a 3 or 4 year old 30 minutes felt like hours!) and had to be held back from following the bride and groom out of a side door at the end because I just wanted to escape and do something fun.

My parents had made sort of a big nest in front of the fireplace with a big brown and red comforter (which they still have - it's very ugly). They put me in it. A black and white cat came over and I tried to grab it but it got away, and I felt that it was almost as big as I was.

I have the strong impression of having been The Only Kid when this happened, which if correct means my sister wasn't born yet, so I would have been less than eighteen months.

Third memory: moving to the house across the street, pulling my red wagon piled with stuff.

That is a massively adorable image.

In my first memory, I'm dancing, dancing, spinning in our living room in front of the TV. It's not on; there's no music on in fact. Just me, spinning on the shag carpeting in the sunshine. This was the first day we moved into that house and I must have been about 18 months old.

In my second memory, I'm lying in bed, wondering why the witch-shaped shadow followed me home from church. Which couldn't have been on that particular wall at all, as there was no light source for it at that time, the lights in our neighborhood not having been installed yet (which would make me about 20 months old).

In my third memory, I am hiding in my closet. I have a glow-in-the-dark owl sticker in there that terrifies me, but I go in and sit in there anyways because sometimes it's good to be scared. Somewhere between 3 & 4, probably, as I was hiding from my sister, who was barely mobile.

My first my mother says didn't actually happen, which probably explains a lot about me. Apparently I confabulated a "weaning party." Um.

My second, my mother and I are in the bathroom. A wire heater with a grid like a fan has the wire grid glowing orange. I stare at it, entranced.

I think my very first memory is of me lying in my bed. I was drinking a sippy cup or something of OJ, and then one of milk, and I threw up, so I went running out into the living room to find my mother. I think I was about two at the time.

My next-oldest memory is of seeing my dad cry when his mother died. I was three.

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