Recall a childhood memory...

[Dee]

Not sure what made me remember this, think something on the news earlier prompted me…

I was about 8 years old walking home from the park with a friend, when we turned onto my street to find it swarming with police cars and an ambulance. We got all excited wondering what was happening in our quiet little street, until I realised the police and paramedics were in and out of *my* house :/

I cant remember thinking a great deal, but I ran into the house to find my mum and dad with a neighbour, who was just wearing a dressing gown covered with blood. Turns out she had a very heated argument with her daughters boyfriend who both lived with her at the time, she had gone into the bathroom, and in true psycho style, he had stabbed her in the shower :/

My brother was playing in the street at the time, and from when I was told, he was very mature for a 4 year old. She had run into the street trying to find someone to help her, and he took her to our house knowing my parents were home, and he even managed to catch a glimpse of this guy as he fled the scene, he had to help the police out after the drama bless him :)

Anyone got any childhood memories? :D

[Davey_Pitch]

Heh, nothing as exciting as that, but here's a very clear one of mine.

I was around 4-5 years old, and was playing in the back yard of our shop/house. Opposite our back gate was a block of flats and a path leading upwards towards them all. It was slightly uphill and I used to love going up there on my little toy car and riding down the hill at speed. My Dad always told me I was never to go out there on my own as it could be dangerous without someone watching me.

Anyway, this particular day, our back gate was open as the shop was expecting a delivery, and my Dad was in the front serving customers. I was playing on my toy car in the back yard, and desperately wanted to come flying down the hill. As I knew he was serving customers and would never know, I rode up to the top as quick as I could, then came flying down again. About halfway down I looked up towards our back gate, and saw my Dad stood right in the middle of it, looking at me with a very mad look on his face.

After the rollicking I received that night, needless to say I never went out there on my own again :D

[Creature]

Can't remember anything like that happening no =/

I can't remember much of my childhood having been knocked out quite severley 3 times before the ages of 10 :( The ones I mainly remember are all sports based, or involve infilcting injurt of somekind.

The one that sticks out, is when I was maybe 10 or 11, and we had a heavy snowfall, me and a few friends werew out in the street, messing around as you do. It eventually lead to us building a 6-7 foot high snowman in the middle of the road...

Just after this, a few of the twatish kids from down the road came out and decided they wanted to annoy us as much as possible (hoses, water baloons etc) We promtly took the snowman appart (with dropkicks), picked up the bottom bit, ran after one at threw it at him, knocking him clean over and into the path of the hose, which was still on. He was very cold, and in a lot of pain...which we took great pleasure in.

The kids are still twats now..they're just a bit more weary whenever my friends and I are around. It's good to have power :)

[Fayshun]

My earliest memory is of going on a picnic with my dad, and coming back with my mum....

[BBx]

Once I remember I was out playing with my friend and we went back to her house for ice lollies... little did I know that mum and dad were frantically looking for me...

I arrived back at the house and they both scolded me rotten.... then for some reason I got in a strop and slammed the living room door really hard and two panes of glass smashed :/

I was grounded for a month... I think.. I was 7ish.

BB x

[Kell_ee001]

I remember trying prawns for the first time when I was about 3 or 4 years old... is that weird? ;D

[Pheebs]

This one time (at baaand camp... ;D) I decided to play around outside on the huuuuuuge hill next to our house. It wasn't particularly steep, but incredibly long, meaning going down it whilst sat on a skateboard/on your bike/in roller boots often meant building up lots of momentum and thus equaling lots of scary fun. Failure to stop in time however would result in either:

a) Falling in a stoney ditch/skidding into some trees
b) Whamming into the back of a parked car
c) Landing smack bang in some nasty bushes (with nettles and dog wee and all sorts in) or...
d) If you had managed not to lose control and had 1337 steering skills you could do a near 180 degrees turn and jump/push up slightly from the road when hammering towards a kerb and land on a muddy leafy woodland path (though if you didn't jump in time you'd wreck your face/ankles).

The flakey black painted skateboard we had and often used to dare devil ourselves down this death trap was a wee falling apart 15cm wide bit of plank attached rather precariously to a couple of stone age ancient wibberly rusty wheels. If you were to sit on it and go down the hill, the key to not being catapulted off was to hold your legs out straight and pretty much grip on to the side for your life. As soon as it started to wibble... you knew you were in trouble and could either attempt to bravely regain control, knowing full well that failure to do so would probably mean the end of play time and a visit to the doctors, or throw yourself off, admitting defeat and succumbing to a few minor bruises/scratches only. Steering was a doddle though, all you had to do is slightly clench one buttcheek and you'd veer off in the opposite direction. You had to be sure though not to clench too hard as it was stupendously sensitive. You'd certainly daren't break wind whilst riding it as it would catapult you off like a rodeo.

So.

Me being me and liking speedy things and stoopid ideas thinks "OooOOoh... I have a good idea... why not go down the hill sitting on the skateboard *WITH* my roller skates on! Genius! I'll go super fast! Ha haaa!"

Hindsight is beautiful isn't it.

About a third of the way down, just after failing to avoid a snail in the road and crushing it with my roller boot, everything felt like it stopped and within a brief moment my facial expression fell from being one of glee to that of a confused-yet-blank state whilst it suddenly occurred to me...

"Oh..... I can't stop."

I think due to sudden loss of concentration on butt clenching/shock of running over a snail/realisation I was pretty darn screwed, the skateboard started to lose control and go wibberly. The rest of my journey was somewhat of a shakey blur - one second there was a tree, then a car, then a tree, then a cat, then a car, then a tree, then a bush... and despite desperately trying to aim for option D to stop... I went straight into the kerb and was flung mercilessly into the bush of all skankiness.

Man... did that hurt.

Oh and after I regained semi-lifeness and clawed myself out of the stinging nettles and up the hill I discovered (somewhat to my relief yet disgust) that the exploded snail I had killed had in fact been dead a long time. How'd I know? It's shell was splattered across the road and his dried up body was covered in a load of maggots (some squished and thrown a few centimeters away from the scene - whoopsy).

Bleh :(

[Pumpkinstew]

My very earliest childhood memory is from when I was 4 or 5. I remember having a yellow digger thing and using it to ferry sand from the pile being used for cement mixing to build the consevatory over to a paddling pool.
Then it got dumped in the pool.

Not too sure on the reason for it. It wasn't a big digger. I probably moved like a handful of sand at a time.

[Pebs]

Edit after posting this....I remember more about this trip than the rest of my childhood!

I remember going to Gibraltar when I was about 6 or 7, I'm not too sure of the details but I went to school there for a while and they made me drink milk :( Bleugh! Still hate it! Anyway, I did a leapfrog over a bollard but I was wearing a skirt and got hung up on it. The other kids had to go and get my dad to lift me down. I remember seeing fish in the marina there and eating sorbet for the first time. I remember climbing the rock of Gibraltar with my dad and getting a certificate for it. I remember driving down it and the door of the taxi flying open on my sisters side....that was the first time I saw my mum cry. I remember getting a 5m swimming certificate but I cheated by walking along the bottom. I remember being in an inflatable ring and being blown down to the deep end of the pool by the wind and my uncle having to rescue me. I remember my aunt and uncle had a balck and white cat called Timmy Two Shoes. I remember watching my uncle parading (he was a drummer in the Royal Marines). I remember a monkey walking up me at the top of the rock and leaving footprints on my yellow tshirt. I had no front teeth while I was there! I remember being the only one brave enough to be poked into the giant cannon to have my pic taken. I remember poking mud through the open window of a car to 'feed' the dog in there which was a King Charles Spaniel. I remember doing that thing, you know where you get a bar and lean on it and then flip over the top of it and hanging under it...well I did that there for the first time.

Oddly I dont remember a single thing about flying there or back :/

[Wryel]

I remember going to see my American grandparents in Pennsylvania and packing my rucksack for the journey. Not having much to pack (I think my teddy and a jumper were about all I needed), there was plenty of room left in the bag. So I filled it with my hardback dictionary. You never know, there might be a spelling bee on the plane!

[Dee]

I remembered sitting by a swimming pool with my little bro, (who was about 2 at the time) at the deep end. He was only allowed to sit on the side, but of course, he jumped in.

I made a right song and dance about it, jumped in like a lifeguard and dragged him to the side of the pool. I was a hero :D

[BBx]

Bit like Pheebs story. Me and my friend Jenny, had a couple of skateboards that we would fashion together with some rope and go down the hill really fast.

It was called a MeiJen :/

Random.

BB x

[semi-pro waster]

It's not quite my earliest childhood memory but it isn't too far off.

I was in Primary 1 and we were at the stage where the teacher would write down sentences we dictated to her telling her what we'd done at the weekend. I'd recently had my Birthday at a local farm which was quite a big event* with loads of my class/friends invited - anyway the next day in class I decided that couldn't be bothered waiting for the teacher to become available so just wrote the short story on my own. It was hardly a work of literary genius (much like anything I still write now) but apparantly this was a very big deal at the time because the next day it was announced that everyone should try writing their own stories. I somehow contrived not to do this and I believe fell asleep by the sandpit instead leading to a telling off by the teacher for not carrying out instructions. Highly unfair - I'd clearly tired myself out the previous day by writing for myself when the rest of my class were just playing about with their toys, the bunch of lazy sods that they are. :D

*I also got my finger bitten by a rabbit on that Birthday, blood gushing everywhere - cute little bunny rabbits my arse.

[mejinks]

I remember riding down the hill by my house when I was about 7 and trying to make the turn at the bottom, but the wheel turned too sharply and I ended up being flug upside down in a somersault over a garden fence, over some stinggies (thankfully) and landing on my back loking up at the sky. I remember it all happening in slow motion and thinking how lovely it was laying down on this lawn.

Another time, I remember climbing a wall which is about 7 foot high and falling off, it took the wind out of me and seriously shook me up because I couldn't breathe. Fortunately, I didnt fall the other side as thats more than a 20 foot drop.

I remember when I was at my 4th birthday party and it was at the church hall, I stuck my fingers in a mouse trap. :(

[Greenlizard0]

My earliest memory had to be of looking at the gap between door, and erm, door frame (where the hinges are), and then seeing if my finger could fit into it.

It could (loose door), and then for some reason I tried shutting the door on myself. Mom stopped me. I never really understood why I did that.

[lostkat]

Hehe some of the things we do as kids :D It's lovely reading these.

One of my first memories is when I was in the loft with my big bro. It was way past my bedtime and I was about 3-4 at the time. My banny (comfort blanket) was over the other side of the loft so I walked over to get it and speared my head on a tv arial (me and bro knew it as the nappy arial for some reason). They had to rush me to the out of ours doctor because there was blood pouring everywhere. I still have the scar. My Mum & Dad have always maintained that I fell and hit it on an old typewriter which was up there, but me and my brother have exactly the same memory. Very odd!

When I was about 8-9, I was riding my bike with 2 friends Sally and Nicola down to our 'den'. As we came out of a little ally way, they were both making comments like "maybe he was asleep in the puddle", which I thought was really odd. A few hours later on the way back just as we were about to turn back into the ally way, we were confronted by a huge growling Alsatian guarding a man who was lying face down on the ground. We went round to the local retired police man's house and told him. He didn't believe us, but went to have a look and sent us home. The next day at school, he came into assembly and told everyone what heros we were and then took us to one side and told us that we'd done the right thing, but sadly the man had died on the way to hospital. He'd had a heart attack :( Wish I'd seen him on the way to our base. I still can't believe that my friends didn't force us to stop and help.

I also remember cycling up the back roads with a load of mates, doing a 'road hog' (zigzagging back and forth across the road), then my wheel sliding off the tarmac and propelling me sideways onto the road. It was my brand new bike and although I was beeling from my knee, elbow and hand, all I was interested in was whether my bike was OK. My Mum absoutely bollocked me when I got home because she'd told me I wasn't allowed down there. I was a right state though and had taken all the skin off my elbow and had massive deep holes in my hand/knee.

[lostkat]

Ohhh I remember being Sleepy out of the 7 dwarves on the Brownie's carnival float one summer. I just lay down and watched the world go by. My best friend was Happy.

I remember the school Playschemes that used to run for about 2 weeks every summer at primary school. They were AMAZING! You could do arts and crafts, sports or just bounce on the bouncey castle all day. My Mum was always leader of the art/craft/pottery part. There were also special days where someone came in from the circus, or a band and you got to learn tricks or lay down a track with them. They did trips too, like swimming (where they had a tuckshop, where I bought flumps), roller skating, bike rides, stately homes etc. It was all SO exciting and the highlight of the school holidays. I remember them having those Calypso drinks too. The ones like this:

http://www.calypso.co.uk/images/item_400/1081.jpg

:D I ruddy loved Playscheme. They stopped it soon after I left :(

[Dee]

Aw Kate, that second story was awful :(

I remember something else... one of my first nursery schools (was called Jumbo Nursery :D), we all had coat pegs with pictures so we knew which one was ours. I was a late starter having just moved to the area, so I was stuck with a tortoise when I wanted the star. We even had our own towels hung on pegs in the toilets with the same picture above it, I can remember waiting for someone else to leave before I used the star towel out of spite :D

[Admiral Huddy]

Good thread :) How weird, I was thinking this just yesterday :D I was thinking that if only Daniel could remember the things going on...

My earliest memory I can recall was was walking to my JMI school in Cheshunt walking though the alley ways. However, I have two i really recall:

1. I remember winning the overall school athletics day :)
2. I remember my mum picking me up with a white patch on her eye. She had an accident with some glass.

[lostkat]

OMG we had those little pictures above our coat pegs too. No idea what mine was, but I know we had pictures and our names in a teeny little cloakroom near the infants area. My first teacher was Mrs Heath, then Mrs Woolaton, who had a Peugeot 205 with a numberplate that was 1 number off my Mum's. Must have been next one to be sold at the garage because they were both Peugeots. :D

Well done on the athletics front Huddy :D I was always good at the obstacle race... and nothing else :p

[Fayshun]

I remember a toy my Nan (or was it my Gran?) got for my sister when she was little. It was a white octopus made of wool. (Odd thing to give a baby!). I picked a packet of marbles to take her as a present for being born. Well it's what I would have wanted.

For my 4th Birthday I got a mahoosive green combine harvester with yellow blades. And it had a swing out arm thing like they do. It was ace.

Silver Jubilee year, Mum and Dad went mad decorating the shop in red, white and blue. They both wore boaters with Union Flag ribbon round the brim and Silver Jubilee aprons. They made me an apron out of a teatowel. I sat next to Stuart Wilson at the Jubilee Jamboree and had a strawberry ice pop.

[TinkerBell]

I remember when I was really young, maybe 3 or 4. I was playing at the end of my garden and I heard someone at the back gate, didn't know who, can't even remember what he was saying just remembering being terrified. The guy must have been drunk or something and was trying to get over the fence and he only had one arm and he had big hair. Ran into the house screaming. That is all I remember, isn't the best! :p

[Snuggle Ferret]

1. Setting the curtains alight with my little toy mop. I stuck it through the safety grate into the open fire.
2. Shaving myself with my Dad's razor and ending up bleeding all over the place.
3. Cracking my head open after falling off the swing.
4. Being smacked in the face by a golf club.

[Tak]

I should have so many...I just can't think of any right now :/

[Gnat]

One of my most vivid memories from being a child, is going to manchester royal eye hospital to have my lazy eye corrected.
I can remember having something put on my hand, then i remember going into a room with my mum, and she had a mask and stuff on.

The vivid part i remember is waking up, looking under the sheet, and finding i had paper pants on, when i had gone in in my own. I can STILL feel the horror and how mortified i was that somebody must have done it while i was asleep now when i think of it lol. Its funny the things that bother you when you are three, I wasnt at all bothered about having something done to my eye, all I cared about was that someone must have seen my bottom while i was asleep ;D

Today i went into hospital, and when i got there, on the bed was a gown... and a packet of paper pants. It reminded me of that :)

[Darrin]

I honestly don't remember what age I was, but I do remember looking up from the gourney at the lights passing by as I'm wheeled towards surgery.

I don't remember much of the few days before or a couple weeks afterwards. This was the day I got my first two wheeled bicycle. My brother and I immediately went to the hill close to our house and proceeded to race down it. I apparently hit a large rock which stopped the bike dead, but I wasn't so lucky. I went over the handlebars and landed face first on the road, then flipping arse end over teakettle smacking the back of my head on something knocking me out.

96 internal stitches and 135 external stitches later they had put my face back into something resembling human shape. They were so concentrated on stopping the bleeding and removing road shrapnel from my face, they never checked for the broken piece at the back of my skull.

Two weeks later and three trips into a coma I finally woke up. For about an hour. I then blacked out again for another couple days. Rinse and repeat back and forth out of conciousness for five more days before I finally stayed awake.

Apparently the first thing I wanted upon waking was a McDonalds Shamrock shake. They are only around for a short time around St Patrick's day and I was afraid I'd missed them...


The earliest memories I have are of the Warragamba Dam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warragamba_Dam) and of skittering down the road in Scotland on the way to school...

[Haly]

:shocked: Nasty! :(

[phykell]

Stitches in my eyelid due to a cycling accident. It was obviously a portent of things to come :D

[Will]

One day, one day the kids from the neighbourhood carried my mother's groceries all the way home, you know why? It was out of respect.

[Will]

I have no recollection of my childhood bar a few photos.

I have vague memories when I go back to France. But out of context and unless people tell me stories I don't actively remember anything. I need a stimulus.

[Dee]

I need a stimulus.

*splutters tea everywhere*

[Will]

How wude!