What is your earliest memory about eye contact?

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Mine is that my mother used to talk to me and narrow her eyes at me at the end as if she disapproved of something. I always wondered if that was why I had a problem with eye contact.

snap!! my 1st memories of eye contact was my mums eyes because they cnat be missed because she really goes for it with the mascara lol...
can always tell when she is annoyed because she frowns and is very noticable

being forced to make it. having people grab my head in their hands and shake me, saying "look at me when i'm talking to you."

not pleasant.

I can remember a quote from from George Bush said "I looked deep into Mr. Putin's eyes and saw his soul"
My earliest memory of eye contact was that of a curious object like a colored glass marble and never for one minute use it to say look into some one's soul or engage in communication with them. My earliest memories were inspecting my sibling's eyes when I was only curious about the color of them like an object, but I would think no more of it than staring at a pretty marble or a pretty little blue daisy. But as soon as they say "what are you looking at?" I immediately look away and clumsily continue the conversation without looking at them in the eye. I did not want to feel I was "looking deep into their soul". I found that although there is something aesthetically appealing about eyes, I dreaded talking to them.
On some occasions as I was inspecting their eyes just for their aesthetic appeal I got a little too curious and poked one with my finger.
Since I have really had to train my self to look into some one eye if I had to engage in conversation. Something that seems to come to NT's naturally.

Paul

I remember the school counseller doing all this exercises with me which at the time I thought were patronising and a total waste of time. One of those exercises included talking about eye contact, what it meant and how to do it effectively. And then actually role-playing conversations while doing eye contact. In retrospect it certainly wasn't as bad as I thought it was back then, and it's probably one of the reasons why people say I'm a good listener nowadays.

My first memory to do with eye contact is from when I was about 10. One of my friends thought that my lack of eye contact meant I wasn't listening to her. I don't know how she figured that one out, since I was replying relevantly to everything she said, but yeah...
She called me ignorant and other such things. That brought home to me the fact that most people do seem to feel reassured by eye contact.

From when I thought eyes were just curious objects I tended to shy away from them as soon as they looked like they were making direct eye contact with mine in return. My first memory of direct eye to eye contact was one to play a little game with my siblings to see who could stare each other out first where the first one the blinks is the loser. I usually blinked first and lost. That is my first memory of true eye contact. Even then I never looked at anyone straight in the eye in casual conversation. Then I was about 10.

It was not until much later when I was watching a psyche documentary about shyness narrated by Philip Zimbardo when I learned I never really looked at people in the eye as I spoke to them. I would be what he describes as a highly disengaged people and would not get far. I was then 38 From then on I made an effort to overcome those autistic instincts and look at people straight in the eye with limited success. At least it was a start.

I remember in 4th grade, there was a joint session of all the 4th and 5th graders. Some guy was talking to us about something, I don't remember for what... but this person told us. "When ever you talk to someone, you always look them in the eyes."

This was a new concept to me. I remember thinking... "Hmmmm.... good idea!" and so after wards, in school, I would always make it a point to look people dead in the eyes when they talked. This un-nerved my teacher who after a while yelled at me and told to stop.

when I was a baby, this guy named Joe used to throw me up in the air while talking baby language in a deep, scary voice. This is my first memory of eye contact. I remember being with my grand a lot as well.

Why do NT's place such importance in eye cantact? Surely they can hear me just as easily even with my back turned to them.

I was on a train in England with my mother and we were going to a wedding. I was about four years old. There was an elderly woman on the train with us. I think she might have been a distant relative because the elderly woman was going to the wedding too. I saw that the elderly woman was very nicely dressed. I turned to my mother and gestured with my hand at the elderly woman and asked, "Mother, is THIS lady the bride?"

The elderly woman looked at me and laughed and I remember how her brown eyes twinkled while she was laughing at me.