FIRST MEMORIES
Have any of you ever done First Memories Exercises? It is a good way of finding out what was going on around you in your very early years as a child. I didn't have to do any exercises because I have a pretty good photographic memory starting as early as one year old. At 11 months of age I was speaking and walking. The doctor told my mother that I was a very advanced and exceptional child. My mother herself would recount stories about how surprised people were when the baby would start speaking in complete sentences. Apparently this was freaky for my mother and for the people around her.
My very first memory is that of wanting to be big and tall. I was not yet tall enough for the top of my head to reach the bottom of an open kitchen drawer even while stretching. I remember that I kept measuring the space between my head and the drawer with my fingers.
The next vivid memory I have is at the age of two years. I had a toy fishing rod and was fishing off a dock with my father. I caught a small fish, pulled it in and my father had to take the fish off the hook for me. I was two years old and totally thrilled with my first catch!
Memory number 3 is of my mother throwing me off a dock into a lake with water over my head. I was almost 3 years old at the time. This incident was and still is extremely terrifying to me, and I remember thinking as the water closed over my head that I would now surely drown. Seconds ticked by seeming like hours while I was under the water. Obviously I had been bestowed with a strong will to survive because I popped up to the surface on my own with no help from my mother. She must have been schooled at the "sink or swim" method of water skills. I cannot say that I am a great swimmer, however, I do have lots of respect for the water.
Thus if you look at your first three childhood memories, those three combined are almost like a blueprint for the rest of your growing up years.
My very first memory is that of wanting to be big and tall. I was not yet tall enough for the top of my head to reach the bottom of an open kitchen drawer even while stretching. I remember that I kept measuring the space between my head and the drawer with my fingers.
The next vivid memory I have is at the age of two years. I had a toy fishing rod and was fishing off a dock with my father. I caught a small fish, pulled it in and my father had to take the fish off the hook for me. I was two years old and totally thrilled with my first catch!
Memory number 3 is of my mother throwing me off a dock into a lake with water over my head. I was almost 3 years old at the time. This incident was and still is extremely terrifying to me, and I remember thinking as the water closed over my head that I would now surely drown. Seconds ticked by seeming like hours while I was under the water. Obviously I had been bestowed with a strong will to survive because I popped up to the surface on my own with no help from my mother. She must have been schooled at the "sink or swim" method of water skills. I cannot say that I am a great swimmer, however, I do have lots of respect for the water.
Thus if you look at your first three childhood memories, those three combined are almost like a blueprint for the rest of your growing up years.
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