h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Going for a job in a hospital tomorrow - and this kicked off a round of reminiscences of times spent in hospitals as kids - and I recalled one incident where I was being taken for an x-ray and not feeling very comfortable about this at all vowed to escape, which I did.

This memory is a flash of fleeting images and associations.

I can remember the blue car we drove to the hospital in.
I remember seeing snow in the car park and it being very cold.
I remember the building was low and made of brick.
I remember the interior was yellow and tiled.
I remember the x-ray room: there was a metal bench in the centre like a plinth and this complex of machinery suspended above.
And I remember the sense of deep unease.

Mum filled in the details.

The car was her friend Angela's, we had planned to go in with me in the push-chair but the snowy conditions meant that was not a good idea.

The hospital was made of brick - and it was only a single storey

The x-ray machine was on rails that ran around the room and it was suspended in the ceiling.

My escape attempt was successful (the metal bench was slippy - I slid right off and hit the ground running.)

Eventually, Mum and Angela had to hold me down while the x-ray was taken so that consequently the x-ray had had least 20 fingers on it.

I screamed.

Then mum said I must have been just two (!)

Because Angela emigrated to America when I was three*. I'd had my 2nd birthday in the August and the trip to the hospital was in the subsequent November or February.


So that's one of my earliest memories - but I was stunned that it should be so early. Two and a bit months.

So I was just wondering if anyone else had any really early memories and what are they.


Clive


*I remember sitting in the Heathrow departure lounge and we read The Enormous Turnip and waved at the planes as they left.

My earliest memory is looking down the High Street (or Royal Mile if you're a tourist ) in Edinburgh. I guess I would have been about two-and-a-half at the time. I have a memory of a play park that may be earlier but I have no context for it so cannot say for sure.

Walking past St James' Church in Bootle, coming home from the Strand with my mum, elder brother and my little brother in the pram and noticing the weird smell that arose just before Marsh Lane collapsed.

My earliest memory that I know isn´t "manufactured" is playing around in a map room at my brother´s christening. It must have been right around my fourth birthday. I have things I remember from earlier, but I´m not sure that´s not just from seeing photos or being told what happened and then having my imagination fill in the blanks.

Mum died when I was four so memories before then are precious to me.

I remember locking myself in the bathroom (and crying until they told me how to unlock it), the wall paper in my parents room and climbing up onto the china cabinet and dropping (I assume) wine glasses on the floor to see what happened.

What odd things to remember!

I also remember wandering off after I had been dressed in my little short pants suit (with plaid bow- tie!) for Sunday service- and getting bloody hell for it!

I was a little terror, apparently.

I have many memories of the first house we lived in. (Enfield 1954-59) I was four when we moved. My parents presumably had already lived in the house for a few years before I was born. One favourite is of myself in the kitchen at our neighbour's house. I had just learned to do up buttons and she took me on her knee while chatting to my mother at her kitchen table. While they were talking, I busied myself undoing the buttons down the front of the lady's blouse!

I also remember the playground at the other end of the street. The slide had wooden sides and I once went down it on the lap of an older girl who lived up the road. My arm rubbed against the wood on the way down and I had a vicious "burn" mark. I remember my mother's hairdresser's which was a house on stilts. I think. I'll have to ask my mother when I see her next.

No stories of me being naughty. I was of course a little

My sister, on the other hand, two years younger than me, has practically no early memories. I have often found that first children are more likely to remember the early days, while the second child can't - and often does not want to - remember that sort of thing.

Getting covered in tar when some older kids took me down to the river..probably quite dangerous as it was high up looking down at the tidal mud of the Medway. God knows what would have happenned if I'd fallen in 2 or 3 I think. My mother had a fit when I got home covered in tar. i don't know what the tar was doing there.

Eating a pear picked from a tree in the grounds of a convent. It was a nursing home and my mother was there following the birth of mys sister (so I'd have been 2 1/2). There was a fete on. I was with my Grandma and another woman - probably my uncle's mother-in-law.

Not long ago I returned to the convent - it now operates as a guest house. I mentioned eating a pear to a nun. (NUNS!!! ARSE!!!) and she said 'Oh, from the tree in the garden.'

It was a seriously place. But give them their due - in the lobby they had a poster for a local LBGT event.

The oldest memory I can date reliably I was between 5 and 6 1/2. I have one memory of a dream set in the house I lived in before the age of 5, but whether I lived in the house at the time I don't know. The only other early memory is of planting an apple pip, but I don't know if I remember being told about it, or I remember doing it.

I have few memories of childhood and that's exactly how I like it thanks. If I could forget the rest I'd be over the

My first night in a French hotel: I remember waking from a nightmare involving huge spiders, and finding myself alone in total darkness. Dying for a pee, I managed to find the door to the hallway, but couldn't reach the doorhandle...... so, I sat down sobbing in the middle of the room and relieved myself right there.

[It was on the same trip that I discovered that it's not a good idea to stick a finger into a bulbless light fitting... I must have been about three.]

Age 3 and change, sitting on a door step in the rain. Elder siblings were at school, Dad at work as usual, and the mother-creature wanting her only TV channel and afternoon soap opera.

Talking with my parents a year or so ago about our trip to Europe when I was just two - there are things about the trip that I think are my own memories, but it's hard to prove, for instance I can remember the bears in a pit in Berne - but then we have photographs of me looking at them, so it's likely that I was shown the photos afterwards as well.

However, the other thing that is definitely my own memory is when we were part way through the trip and we stayed in a hotel somewhere and I was offered some water in a glass - which I bit. Being two and all I just thought it looked interesting. I'd probably only ever drunk out of china cups up till then. I can remember the glass in my mouth and everyone being incredibly worried, including the hotel owner who spoke a lot of words that I couldn't understand. French. These two things struck me as being amazing, that glass didn't taste as good as it looked and that my dad could talk to the lady too.

My parents had totally forgotten about this incident until I told them that I could remember it. It's as clear now as it was when it happened. I was so tiny that when the lady offered me the water, I was still being carried by my dad.

My son can remember standing up in his cot, with a new huge teddy bear that was as tall as he was (he stopped sleeping in a cot when he was less than two as his baby sister needed it).

I think it's to do with language acquisition, and also some unusual occurrence that happens that's important enough to remember.

btw...it is believed that human brains acquire the ability to store long term memories at age 3-ish.

My earliest memory is as a 3-year-old.

Tottering down the backyard in mum's high-heeled shoes and still wearing my long nightie, climbing up the gate to open it and wandering out into the back entry.

My aunt June was on her way to school and caught me on my travels towards the park at the end of the street

After that all doors and gates were bolted out of my reach

lil xx

Yeah 3 is meant to be very significant...something I remember reading somewhere that Leonardo da vinci suffered at the age of 3..my brother turned up then..that was a trauma..)(not that I would compare myself to him )

Mine are musical
The Seekers - Morningtown Ride
Petula Clark - Downtown
Carole King - It might as well rain until September
all drifting through my bedroom door from mum's transistor radio...

Lanzababy's comment >>... I think are my own memories, but it's hard to prove...<<

Having a tantrum in a shop & being uncontrollable. An old man on a stick lowers himself, puts his face in mine, screws it up and screams at me.
I never did that again, apparently...


One I do remember, noted elsewhere here:
Wartime, wailing sirens. Shepherded under the stairs, dog first then me...

Another (Woodbines - remember them? In paper packets of five?):
Granddad digging & planting the garden, cigarettes fall out of his top pocket . "Why?" "I'm planting them, to grow more"