Memory

Ed with sister Kathryn

I've always heard that we can't remember events from our childhood before the age of 3.
But I never believed it because my earliest memory is before that. I think I was maybe two and a half or so.

I was sitting on the steps of our home on East 5th Street staring blankly at nothing, when
it suddenly dawned on me that I was a person. I had legs and arms and...

That's it. My earliest memory.

The awareness that dawned on me that day may very well been obvious to all the other kids my age,  and maybe I was slow to catch on, but nevertheless, I remember the event.

The experts don't say that kids that young can't remember things, they agree that they can. However, as children grow older, they say they lose the ability to retain those memories. They back up this theory with a lot of mumbo jumbo about the not yet fully developed hippocampus and the amygdala in the brain that are involved in memory storage.

My second earliest memory was when I must have been 3 years old, because I was talking.  There was a kid my age who lived across the street named Burt who I'd see playing in his front yard a lot. Neither one of us of course was allowed to cross that fairly busy street, but one day I decided to reach out and say something to Burt.

"Hey Burt," I hollered.

He looked up at me and replied,

"I'm going to kill you."

I could feel the hippocampus and amygdala in my brain standing at attention and sending a quick memo to little Eddie Myers to "stay on your side of the street!"

-Ed