Early memories

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I read an article on this just today (well, yesterday, seeing as it's now after midnight):

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/asp ... and-autism

My earliest memories date back to when I was 2 years old--perhaps earlier). I remember the green Volvo station wagon we got rid of about two months before I turned three. I remember its brown faux leather seats. I remember being in a car seat and I remember having my diaper changed, sleeping in a crib, being potty-trained, and so on.

My sister comments how I can remember things in such detail, and describes how little she remembers by comparison.

That article is very interesting FishStickNick, I never realised so few people had memories of before the age of seven. I have over a dozen memories dating between the ages of three and four, the way I played repetitively with my toys for instance, playing out the same fragment of a scene over and over again because I liked manipulating the toys that way, and how I enjoyed lying on a deck chair outside covered in a towel. The one I remember was red with yellow and blue lines in it. I loved watching the sun shine through it, illuminating the tiny gaps between the individual looped threads. I could stay there for hours.

I remember my parents smiling as I was playing with my toys but then attempted to try and walk, I was basically pivot walking but it seemed to have made my parents happy

Apparently I could get really persistent on people having to change their clothes if they had a little speck of dirt on it. If I got interrupted when I was speaking, I would start all over again until I got to finish the sentence without interruption.

I had a hard time getting to know people, didn't quite know how to approach them, or how one became friends. When I first started school i got an instant connection with one girl, after what I remember (she doesn't remember this), it was before we even got to the stage of talking. Most of my other friendships have grown out of that one. Friends she had that I got to know because I was hanging out with her when they were around. Quite the slow process, but some of them did end in friendship. Then some of the new friendships would turn into yet another friendship. That being said, there is very few friends that I feel comfortable being alone with.

I was diagnosed late in life (at the age of 20), which led me to believe that my social problems was caused by me being inferior to others, and that people in general had no interest in getting to know me. I see, now, that some of these problems were probably caused by AS, but I still can't quite shake the feeling of being inferior. When I was participating in team sports I would just distance myself from the other people.

As a kid I was extremely afraid of dying, to the point where I had problems sleeping because I was afraid I would die in my sleep or stop breathing, and not be able to notice it. To be honest, my fear of death didn't go away, but I try not to think about it, because if I think too much about it, I get a panic attack, or might even go into a panicky state that lasts for days. I remember this happening approximately three years ago. I kinda wanted to die, because the fear of death was so bad, but that would be a paradox, because dying is what I were afraid of in the first place, so if I were to die to get rid of the fear, I would have to face my greatest fear.

I was also afraid of people breaking into the house, so I would put away sharp objects before I went to bed.

In school I had problems with creating my own sentences (you can't just find the right answer and write it down, you have to use your own words), taking notes and to summarize. I have huge problems with filtering out the not so important stuff, or to shorten information.

i also remember every night i would take my clothes out of my closet and pile them up in my doorway, i remember not being able to use Forks and Knives, and being toilet trained (which was terrible)

I remember my most embarrassing toilet moments. I may have been between 2 or 3. One was I flushed all the toilet rolls down the toilet and I remember watching my dad having to unclog the drain. We had this massive round septic tank I think it was. The other time I went no.2 in the children's training potty.

My sister and I loved to climb these rocks in our backyard. I used to love swinging on the metal gate too.

Our town was small and made up of a population of less than 800 and I used to go off wandering a lot and never felt scared once. I can still remember the landscape in my mind. Small houses, winding roads, clumps of short forests all leading to the beach. There was a scary cat in the nieghbourhood.

In our backyard was a bay and my sister and her friends would take out this inflatable black tire and one time they pretended to drown. Naturally, I believed them, as young as I was.

My sister that's closest in age and I used to dress up as cats. We had costumes made for us.

There were no doors in our home but these tassel-like things that most sea food shops had.

My best friend was an old female German Shepherd which may have started my love of that breed.

One day my sister came to a public oval crying and it was because I didn't meet her after school. I never realised she was worried for me. I thought she was too scared to go home on her own. I'm the youngest out of us.

I remember in preschool how my drawing was turned into a plate.

My neighbours had a Sheltland pony and I loved it so much that I wanted to take it with me when we moved.

I used to remember vividly the day my first dog died but I think I've blocked it out of my mind.

I have a couple of memories from infancy but most of my memories start at age 2. I have a flood of memories from age 2 to 5 and I feel closer to those memories than to memories of my later childhood.
I love those long ago memories.
I remember Newark NJ in the early 50's.
I could look out the window early in the morning and see the rag man and his horse drawn cart full of rags yelling "rags" over and over and the housewives would come out and purchase rags from him to do their housecleaning.
Street cleaners would also come around early in the mornings. They weren't big noisy vehicles though, they were men pushing large push brooms through the gutters.
There was a magician barber with a barber shop at the end of the street. He used to glue coins to the floor and kids would try to pick them up. Once I was waiting while he was cutting my brothers hair and he walked over to me and pulled a chain of sausages out of my scarf.
The world was different then.

I'm surprised too to find out that most people don't have a lot of early memories. Not too long ago, a person was mentioning something to me that happened when I was 9 and said something like, "oh but you probably wouldn't remember much from that age." I didn't say anything about it but I was really offended and perplexed that they would just assume I wouldn't have many memories from that time.

My early memories are pretty extensive. Some are kind of vague or momentary but some are more detailed. I wouldn't even know where to start.

My earliest memory is of being a baby and going to visit someone who lived in a trailer. I remember seeing the trailer from the outside when we got out of the car and then seeing the inside of the place. I don't know who the people were though. A lot of my memories are like that, I can remember what places looked like better than I remember the people.

Thinking back on what I was like as a child, did I show signs of autism? I am really not sure. Obviously if I did, no one recognized it. I don't remember having meltdowns or anything like that. I was very quiet.

My earliest memory is of my father happily holding me in his lap, and then suddenly setting me aside and rushing from the room. Perhaps I was not attuned to the telephone signal. The next one is of crawling off a blanket and encountering dew on the grass for the first time, but that memory had been reinforced by being in a family movie I saw.
I remember early doctor's visits being particularly traumatic. Stories about vaccinations suddenly turning kids autistic may stem from a sudden loss of trust in adults. Saline injections would have done the same thing.