Life in the Boomer Lane has always been skeptical of the conclusions people reach when they go through past life regression. When one considers that, throughout history, the overwhelming majority of people consisted of the unwashed masses, it is astonishing that so many folks discover they were Marie Antoinette or a Pharaoh in a past life. Apparently, few people descended from the unwashed masses never explore their past lives.
Along with that goes the belief that our earliest memories are somehow significant. Psychology Today just published an article titled “What Our Earliest Memories Say About Us” by Lee Eisenberg. Eisenberg asked people what their earliest memories were. People coughed up some amazingly clear and often dramatic memories from as early as six months.
Shockingly, it turns out that our earliest “memories” aren’t memories at all. They are constructs that allow us to explain the ensuing events of our lives. According to Alfred Adler, an early psychoanalyst who has influenced Eisenberg, they are “a guiding fiction we create about ourselves. The memories we designate as our earliest are the beginning of our long-term private autobiography.”
Eisenberg writes, “early memories are often highly cinematic.” LBL was crushed to read this. Her actual response was “Say it ain’t so!” in itself, a highly cinematic saying. LBL has always believed that her own earliest memory was of being in her stroller, fixated on her mom’s feet as they walked along the pavement, pushing her. The movement took on an otherworldly quality. Her mom’s feet seem to float slightly above the pavement, swishing back and forth in a way worthy of a Fellini film. Not bad for a six-month-old to appreciate, right? And perfect for someone who, to this day, prides herself as having great creative intelligence.
Go figure. Now LBL must contend with the very real possibility that this “memory” was nothing more than evidence she, herself, fabricated to account for her creativity, when, in fact, he true earliest memory was probably barfing on her mom or peeing in her bed. Since these true memories would have indicated that she was nothing extraordinary or, worse, merely a garden variety barfing bed wetter, she suppressed them. It’s another version of the past life regression thing. Its better to be Marie Antoinette (even given the unsavory ending and stupid hair) than to be someone with rotted teeth and the plague.
Since reading this, LBL has revisited a number of her early memories. Could it be possible that she didn’t actually recite the Gettysburg Address at the age of 14 months, fret over perspective in drawing a table at the age of two, or arrange the food on her high chair tray in the order of the color spectrum? On the other hand, she probably did, at age three, crash into her grandmothers floor lamp (which toppled over and broke into smithereens), barf all over her dad after he took her on an amusement park ride, and scream her head off at her first sight of an actual monkey.
In order to test the theory written about by Adler and Eisenberg, LBL asked people she knew what their earliest memories were. Most of them just stared at her. Some people actually said they had no really early memories. They were already of school age when their first memories started. LBL analyzed all of the data of her own research and concluded that she needed a more interesting set of friends.
LBL now invites all readers to submit their earliest memories to her. She will assess them and tell you which you can save and which you must get rid of pronto. She will also, for a reasonable fee, provide interesting memories readers can incorporate into their own lives. It’s yet one more valuable service she provides her readers.
Life in the Boomer Lane 
Keith
April 25, 2016
Reciting the Gettysburg Address at 14 months. Hell, I did not know that a “score” was twenty years until I was eleven. What amazes me is Tiger Woods was a better golfer than I am now at age four. I may not remember things when I was two, but I do remember our oldest child climbing through the deck railing on our fifteen foot high deck and hanging from the rails before I pulled him back over – I remember everything in slow motion as I reached over and still do.
Life in the Boomer Lane
April 26, 2016
The Gettysburg Address was pure artistic license. Ah, kids do know how to stop our hearts don’t they, both in good ways and not.
Keith
April 27, 2016
Indeed. It is amazing how time slows down. Losing sight of my middle son at the zoo was the longest twenty seconds of my life.
Lynne Spreen
April 25, 2016
In a wonderful book, Aging Well by Dr. George Vaillant, he reports on 3 longevity studies that track people over as much as 70 years to learn how people age and develop. It’s said that this is the only accurate way to gather data, as opposed to asking an old person, “what was the secret to your (happy life, long marriage, long life)?” Because they can’t accurately tell you. We honestly forget, but we also deliberately forget. It turns out that many of us “remember” things differently than how they happened, and this may be a coping skill. Because who wants to go to their grave with bad memories? Better to craft new ones.
Life in the Boomer Lane
April 26, 2016
I’ve always discounted what anyone says about why they have lived long or aged well or stayed together successfully. So much of the first two are determined by genes, and at least a small part of the third is determined by circumstance and by how people mature. I like the idea of crafting new memories, and I also subscribe to the ability we all have to change our perceptions of our life events, even if the events happened long ago. Why not see the events of our lives in a way that moves us forward, instead of holds us back?
Nelson Bartley
April 25, 2016
Getting the chicken pox when I was four? My oldest brother had it, then my other brother, then my FATHER, and then me….which meant my mother had basically been housebound for over a month taking care of people. All I remember was she was beyond angry and in a horrible mood when I first developed spots. Couldn’t figure out why but now after raising my own three kids, I 100% understand.
May have been at the same time but the doctor coming to the house. A neighbor kid jumping off a fence and ending up with a nail through his foot. Snow and building a snowman which seemed huge but came to my 5 yr old waist. Another neighbor cutting her own bangs-badly. I moved for the first time when I was five so I have a group of memories from that first house but probably all starting around 4 yrs or so.
Life in the Boomer Lane
April 26, 2016
Early memories are fascinating. Why do we sometimes choose small events to remember and let some large ones go?
Andrew Reynolds
April 25, 2016
My first memory is of being in a playpen and watching the 60’s TV show “Mr. Ed.” I’ve always worried what that meant. Perhaps I am in jail and longing to watch bad TV shows…
Life in the Boomer Lane
April 27, 2016
Very funny, Andrew. If you had said the 70s, I would have said I could have watched it in the playpen with my son. But that wouldn’t have happened either, because that show would never have been on my my house. I have my standards.
Hazel
April 25, 2016
When I was about four years old, our family dog got rabies. Everyone in the family had to have the series of shots in the stomach. By the end of the fourteen days, I had become terrified of needles. All these decades later, I still have to look away when i get a shot or someone take blood.
Life in the Boomer Lane
April 27, 2016
What an awful memory, Hazel. That sure beats mine of the monkey at the street fair. Unless, of course, the monkey had rabies, and then I could really spin something out of it.
Jocelyn Green
April 25, 2016
My earliest memory is one of me when I was 2 or 2 1/2 walking toward a squashed dead cat (likely run over by a car, or am I altering the story to suit my adult self?) and my mom pulling me away. I did not know then that it was dead. My next memory is of myself as a 4 year-old, my 4th birthday party, and that same year, real hot weather in summer. Same age, travelling with the family in a small camper to a place where my parents picked cherries to earn money. I remember living in the Northwest Territories in Canada when I was 5 and 6, and being chased by a neighbour girl who was threatening to hurt me with a small saw. And before that in the NWT living in a northern camp hut where I figured the butter and jam sandwiches were the best food I ever tasted. The adult me now thinks that we must have been short of food and that I must have been quite hungry.
Life in the Boomer Lane
April 27, 2016
This comment reads like a mighty compelling intro to a book. Have you considered writing one, based on your early life? I’d buy it.
Jocelyn Green
April 28, 2016
I’d better get busy then! What an encouraging comment. Thank you.
Jill Foer Hirsch
April 25, 2016
Forgetting for a moment my earliest memory, which involves a playpen and a lifelong feeling of abandonment, which I am totally NOT obsessed with, there is the issue of Grandma Memory. Just the other day my mom was talking about the 4 times my nephew did his Comedy Kid talent act, when he was 6 years old (he is now 23). My brother tried to correct her, reminding her that most people can barely sit through one Kindergarten talent show, let alone multiple times. But my mom insists that it was a 4 night engagement, because my nephew was so damn talented. He was damn good, but not that good. According to the same source, my brothers and I were reading Tolstoy before we entered pre-school.
Life in the Boomer Lane
April 27, 2016
And that’s the problem with memory. One day I was mentioning to a friend of mine that my mom died at the same time as the king of the gypsies died. I knew that because each time I went to the hospital, all the gypsies were camped out in the lobby, holding vigil. My friend said, “That was my mom, not yours. You’ve forgotten.” But I knew I hadn’t. To this day, the matter remains unresolved. But I was so taken with my own strong memory of the experience, that I later wrote a novel, “King of the Gypsies.”
Jill Foer Hirsch
April 27, 2016
I just know you’re memory is correct. I just know it.
Jill Foer Hirsch
April 27, 2016
Ugh. *Your* memory, not you’re. Sigh.
Taswegian1957
April 25, 2016
My earliest memory which I am sure is my own and not something that I was told about by my mother is of being on a bridge and looking over it to see trains. This bridge was in the town where my grandparents lived and in later childhood I could not understand why I could not see over the top of the railings when I knew I had done so before. The part that I had not remembered is that my grandfather would hold me up to see them. This happend when I was two years old. So I have little memory of my grandfather but developed a lifelong interest in trains. What does that tell you?
Life in the Boomer Lane
April 27, 2016
It tells me that memories are mighty selective. You chose trains over your grandfather. Maybe some brilliant psychologist knows the answer. or maybe to a very small child, a huge moving train is far more compelling than a stationary older man.
niceandnerdy
April 25, 2016
I remember tripping over a large cement brick at age 3 and cutting my knee. I still have the scar. It was the first time I saw a lot of blood. Hmmmm, now it explains why I have such an adverse reaction to the sight of blood. Thanks that was an epiphany for me.
Life in the Boomer Lane
April 27, 2016
Wow, I love that you had that epiphany as the result of reading the post. Memories, whether real or fabricated, are so powerful in shaping who we are.
Gail Kaufman
April 25, 2016
I remember being in a stroller and my mother taking me to a fish store and giving me a piece of smoked Nova Scotia to eat. How weird is that?
Life in the Boomer Lane
April 27, 2016
It’s as weird or not weird as anything else. The only question is, how do you feel about lox now?
Gail Kaufman
April 27, 2016
It’s my comfort food!
Jill Foer Hirsch
April 27, 2016
I’m going to jump in here and say that when my mom fed me lox as a kid, no one told me it was fish. I mean, no one. Ditto sable, and whitefish, which honestly should have been obvious. OK, I was not the brightest kid in the world, but I had an excellent palate.
Gail Kaufman
April 27, 2016
These are among my favorite foods😊
aginggracefullymyass
May 6, 2016
In kindergarten at 4 years old. That’s as far back as I can go. But I do remember a lot of it – the little rug I took naps on, the milk & graham cracker snacks, the little playhouse in the classroom. And nothing else from that time outside of kindergarten. Clearly going to school made a big impression on me!
I think I remember other things, but I realize that I’ve seen pictures of whatever it is I’m remembering, so it’s something my mind is creating from a photo prompt. Tricky…
Fun post LBL!
Life in the Boomer Lane
May 16, 2016
Thanks! Wow, you remember more about kindergarten than I did. I sort of remember the room, but the biggest memory was the wooden pretend kitchen area. I loved that, which is amusing since I never developed any later interest in cooking. Playing at it is a lot more fun.