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Comment by ryao | Hacker News Reader

I have memories dating back to the day I was born. I was incredibly bored as an infant, so I played a game I invented where I would replay all of my memories on a regular basis. It turned out that my game was essentially a spaced repetition method. The result is that I did not forget, while others did.

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If you can remember all the way back to the day of your birth, those memories are surely not real memories. Newborn babies are essentially not fully conscious - not in a way that would create any long-term memory of lived events anyway.

It sounds to me that this memory-recall game likely started when you were a toddler or preschooler rather than an infant, and that while this may give you additional reach back into your earliest memories, it was likely more a game of creativity than genuine memory recall. Into adulthood the real memories and the invented ones can end up feeling roughly the same.

Unfortunately there's really no way to test the accuracy of your memory aside from comparing your memories to a previously unobserved but concrete record. For most of us, our childhood was documented by our parents, and the stories shared with us over the course of our lives, so there's no way to prove that even the accurate recollections weren't simply our memories of the stories rather than the events themselves.

Humans have poor memory anyway. We misremember things that happened recently, so it is probably unwise to trust your memory of things that distant as being accurate, especially when they reach back to an age where most established science suggests that you wouldn't have even possessed self-awareness.

It started at some point after my birth when I still remembered my time in the hospital and given that I later successfully recounted events from that day, that my grandparents witnessed, to my parents, it is safe to say that my memories are accurate. Your assumption that I was not conscious is absurd. Maybe you were not conscious, but I was. I was a very precocious child.

A newborn's eyes are not focussed.

That would explain why everything was white except really close things like the nurses’ hands. The nurses’ hands were the only color other than white that I recall seeing that day. I had some awareness of the crib’s walls (or whatever that thing was), but beyond that, I saw nothing but bright white light.

If that study is correct https://www.jneurosci.org/content/32/35/12144.abstract, considering the number of times you must have recalled them, what you remember must be significantly different than what happened, especially since you were probably missing a lot of understanding as an infant.

It is not that significantly different, although my poor understanding certainly left people with that impression. I thought the nurse in the hospital on the day I was born was an aunt. As a young child, I would later describe my baptism at 9 months of age as being dunked. It was not that I meant that I was literally dunked into the water. I simply thought the sensation of water dripping to the back of my head was being dunked. I also had been terrified during my baptism since I thought the deacon was trying to drown me. My parents were so thrilled that I was not crying like the other children while in reality, the reason I was silent was because I terrified about actually being immersed into water and drowned. That said, at the time, I did not really understand how to disambiguate what I had regarded to be dunking from immersion, even though I had the faint concept that the air supply could be severed by being immersed in water, which is why I had been terrified.

I recall one time when I was around 2 years old and my parents took me to Pizza Hut. When asked about toppings and hearing that we could have three, I said I wanted extra extra extra cheese. They thought I was being cute. However, I had no concept of cuteness or how to be it. I simply wanted all 3 toppings to be extra cheese and to my disappointment, 2 of the toppings were not. At the time, I had not known how to say 3 toppings of extra cheese and I thought repeating extra three times would communicate what I wanted.

That said, I stopped playing my memory recall game around age 5 when I began to be bullied and did not want to remember the past anymore. That left me with far fewer memories from early grade school than I had from prior years. It also let many of my early memories fade, although not enough for me to forget them entirely.

> However, I had no concept of cuteness or how to be it.

My memory isn't as good as yours, but you just reminded me of this fairly distinct feeling. As a child you're being earnest; only as an adult do you see that as being cute.

To the day you were born sounds extreme? Does a baby even 'see'? Your game as a kid makes the concept kinda believable in some sense though. But I have a hard time believing that early?

I have quite a lot of early memories. More than usual. And I remember that I remembered more early stuff when I was a child but I have no recollection of my first year now and only really vague and maybe indirect memories of my second year.

Everything except things up close was white. If I had to guess, I could not see further than a foot if that (although when I first was able to talk, I had thought the distance had been 3 feet or less). I did try looking around once after making great effort to push my torso upward, but everything was white and it was exhausting. I wanted to make another attempt but did not muster the will to exert myself again. The only color I could see aside from white was the nurse’s hand when she annoyingly reached into the crib (or whatever it was called) to put some uncomfortably warm thing onto my head. My hands did not work very well so I had to nudge it off my head each time using them as blunt instruments. To my relief, she gave up after a few times.

Interestingly, my grandparents had witnessed all of this. Later, when I could speak and asked my mother why my aunt kept putting something on my head one day when I was younger, she recalled what my grandparents had told her and told me it was the nurse on the day I was born. I had not realized it had been the day I was born until she told me. At the time I could speak to ask about it, I simply had regarded it to be when I was very young.

To be clear, I had no idea that various early memories were from my first year until I talked to my parents about them. The memories that have been dated to my first year are:

* The time in the room where newborn children are placed. The events here were witnessed by my grandparents and told to my parents.

* The remnant of my umbilical cord falling off my belly button at my aunt’s house. That really hurt.

* My baptism. I had misunderstood the water as a prelude to being drowned and was terrified that the deacon wanted to kill me.

I assume that there are more memories from my first year, but since they do not correspond to something others witnessed and remember, there is no way of dating them to that year.

In the case of the first two, I had asked my parents about them when I could talk and they realized that I was recalling very early memories. In the case of my baptism, my mother had decided to recount my baptism talking about happy she was that I had been the only well behaved child there (the Catholic Church often baptizes children in batches). Upon hearing that, I remembered the event and responded complaining that I had only been quiet because I thought if I had opened my mouth to cry, I would have been drowned to death soon afterward. What was a fond memory for her was a horrific memory for me.

The concept is interesting. I think the awareness of babies might be underestimated.

> I had misunderstood the water as a prelude to being drowned and was terrified that the deacon wanted to kill me.

Sounds like a rationalisation way later though? I don't think you could be aware of either concept at the time. Like, the fear of the priest as a stranger, or fear of the other babies screams from pouring water on their heads. Not the concept of drowning or killing.

It was a deacon and I was not afraid of him. I was afraid of being drowned. I probably had some prior notion of drowning from being bathed by my mother. She was a very results oriented person that did not have any idea that the details of how you do things are important. It is almost certain that she accidentally got water in my nose at some point (possibly multiple times), which made me acutely aware of the notion of drowning. It is a memory that I likely elected to forget, although traces likely remained, which likely caused my fear during my baptism.

Coincidentally, I have had a lifelong aversion to putting my head below water. It made learning to swim impossible.

Isn't drowning one of the few things that babies instinctually fear?

My goodness, this is fascinating! Thank you for sharing!

I have a few memories that my parents have placed at around me being 2. I would say they have also remained through repetition, but in my case not active or voluntary. Those memories, although very vivid and specific (I can pinpoint them as specific events), are mostly attached to senses (something I saw, something I smelled). And because I continued to have those inputs during several years later, I guess the memories were thus persisted.

What do you remember of the day you were born? How did you validate your memories?

My parents and I later discussed them. Anyway, I remember the room where they put children after they were born. Everything was white except for what was really close. A nurse that I had assumed at some point to be a relative kept putting this annoyingly warm cap on my head that I struggled to remove. I even tried pushing myself up once to look around, but I saw nothing and the effort was exhausting, so I did not try it again even though I contemplated doing it. It turns out that my grandparents were watching through the window from the hospital hallway and witnessed that, which I later heard after I recounted the story.

Wow, that's really quite something!

I have memories way back. Not quite infant, but somewhere between 1 and 2 years old, I started to string it together.

One trigger was fear of sleep. How do I know I wake up the same person? Seems silly right? Well, past me without a whole lot of experience was really concerned. I can remember a ton after that time.

What I find really interesting is both of us made some active choice to remember. Like we ended up with self awareness really early.

For me, it was mostly about unanswered questions. I have memories that are strongest from that time:

One was flicking the spring in my crib. Swoosh doing, doing, da,da,doing! That is me earliest one.

Why does it bounce like that? And the noise! If I flick one today, on one of those

Another was a trip to the neighbors. Their kid was named Cash. That is what we call money! WTF is with that?

Cash took me to play down stairs and they had a ton of nice stuff down there. Fencing for a ring of thieves. I recalled enough to nail them many years later to which my mom confessed they moved to get away from those people. Lol.

Another was this big bee. I looked at it and bet I was faster and stomped! Ouweeeee! The need died, but also totally stung me. Was not faster. Ugh. Boy, I can recall our porch, welcome mat, bright clear summer day, that bee and my foot going down. . I have more. Turning on the TV was vivid. Old tube one made noises as it came up. And smells. I recall it like it was yesterday.

Anything intriguing and I go into record mode. Everything about that time gets saved. Where I was who I was with, happenings...

I was afraid I might forget and never learn the thing one learns on one of those.

I still do it. Not as often now due to experience, but if it is really new to me, I will feel that switch and off it goes.

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