Earlest childhood memory

[Earp10]

here's mine

[HopeImLucky]

I have 2 early memories, they are so long ago now (coming up to 40 years) that I don't know which came first.

The title of the thread reminded me of this one, so maybe it is the earliest, I just don't know lol. I was 4 years old, and had just got my 1st bike for Christmas. We lived on a hill, and my friend from the same street dared me to ride down the hill. I knew he had a better bike than mine (his had front and back brakes while mine had only front ones) so I accepted the dare on the condition that he did it first. Down he went, clean as a whistle so it was my turn. Down I went, no problems at all until a car came along intent on occupying the same space as I was going to be in in about 2 seconds. I had a good idea about the consequences of arguing with a car so I slammed my brakes on as hard as I could. Unfortunately, since I had only front brakes this caused me to go flying over the handlebars and land on my face. Although this was extremely painful, in retrospect it was probably better than either colliding with or getting hit by a car. On the bonus side, my face was so bad that my Mum kept me off school for over 2 weeks lmao.


My other memory is of my mum taking me shopping in Belfast city centre. I was born in 1969 so this happened in the early or mid 70s. I remember my older sister being there, but not my younger brother so I was probably about 2 or 3. If my mum had a babysitter though, that would also explain why my wee brother wasn't with us. So there we were, my dad working, shopper's paradise for my mum when an announcement came across the tannoy. Given the age I was, I hadn't a clue what it said, but my mum grabbed both myself and my sister by the arm and ran for the doors as fast as she could ger there. Everyone else in the store was doing exactly the same thing but that didn't annoy me, it was the look of terror on my mum's face that had me scared. It turned out that the IRA had phoned to say that there was a bomb in that store. To this day I don't know if there was a bomb or if it was just a hoax. All I remember is the fear on my mum's face which was passed on to us kids.


Fun times growing up in Belfast.