By: Michelle Fox

Has anyone ever really tried to think back to their first memory? How far back could you go, age 5? Maybe 4 if you try really hard to remember? Obviously you were alive during the first 4 years of your life, but why is it basically impossible for you to recall it? It isn’t because you weren’t conscious for it, although you might have been napping for most of it because you were a baby. Our brains endure something called ‘Infantile Amnesia’ which is where the parts of our brain that are responsible for memory (the Limbic System) are not fully developed. Until about the age of 4, the brain does not stop developing the Limbic system which has the Hippocampus and the Amygdala making memories developed during that time seem as if they did not happen. Children can remember those times, but as we age, we begin to not be able to recall those times.

The earliest Memory I can think of was from when I was 4 years old. I was in the backseat of my father’s car, and we were driving to my Grandparents’ house in Wayne NJ, for Christmas Eve. On the way we stopped at Starbucks to get coffee. I had just seen the movie Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me. My mother offered me a sip of her coffee, and after seeing the movie I figured it would be funny to quote one of my favorite lines from the movie. I took a sip of my mother’s coffee and said in my 4 year old voice “this coffee, tastes like shit!” My father nearly spit the coffee in his mouth out all over the windshield. I thought it was so funny, until I saw the anger in my father’s eyes. My parents began yelling at each other and back at me and back at each other and my brother and I just sat there staring at them. Finally my parents came to the conclusion that it was their own fault for my colorful language because they allowed me to watch the movie with such profanity in it. They told me to never say that word again and we continued to my grandmother’s home. It was quite the experience and I will never forget it.