[mahmud]

OT, but how far back in your youth can you remember? I ask this because I described my earliest memory to my mother and she confirmed that at that time I must have been no more than 18 months old. It was an apartment we lived in during a brief period of separation from my father, when she went AWOL with me, and she swore she never told anyone where we have been for those few weeks.

I also remember a day when my brother took me on his motorcycle because I was sitting on the gas tank and it burned my thighs. Turns out my brother left for the U.S. when I was 2 years old.

My aunt has letters I wrote to her when I was 4, and those I remember like it was yesterday. The first letter has punctures in it because it was the day I found out that you couldn't write a letter on the carpet, and needed a hard surface behind it to keep the pencil from puncturing it.

[petercooper]

FWIW, I remember almost nothing from before 6. I can remember a few extended memories aged 6, then quite a lot from about 8 onwards. The absolute earliest memory I can dredge up is age 5 but we're talking a mere snatch of an image. I have bizarre time and memory dilation issues in any case so my brain isn't quite representative of the norm!

My father, on the other hand, goes to the other extreme and claims to remember being in his pram in the garden at about 18 months old and not being able to understand the noises being made by other people around him.

[erlanger]

Yea, I think it's all relative. I know people who remember little from before the age of 6, and I find that to be almost disturbing...I remember most everything from 4 onward, and my earliest memory involves me wanting a particular sort of diaper (the pig ones!), so I imagine I was pretty young at the time.