While chatting with a high school classmate recently we discussed some childhood and school memories. He said he could remember back to his pre-kindergarten years and I said I can remember bits and pieces of when I was two years old.

That’s nothing special but it is uncommon.

Psychologists tell us that most people cannot remember beyond age three. Children’s memory abilities, it is understood, don’t fully mature until about age seven. They call this inability to recall memories from early childhood “infantile amnesia” and believe this is not due to a lack of memory formation, but rather a difficulty in retrieving them later in life.

My first memories are of our farm house when I was two. I have fuzzy memories of the house and its floor plan. Several years ago I drew the floor plan as I remembered it and showed the drawing to my mother who confirmed it was accurate.

Cousin Denny spent several days with us when we were two when his parents took a vacation trip to Yellowstone Park. I remember that!

An uncle and aunt, I recall, gave me a cowboy gun and holster set for my third birthday.

I was three years and six months old when my oldest brother was born and I remember that occasion quite well. My mother’s younger sister, Aunt Fannie, stayed with us to take care of me while Mom was in the hospital.

A couple months later I remember having to sit with my grandparents in church while my parents had my baby brother baptized.

Early the next spring we had spent Sunday at my grandparents’ home. The gravel roads were thawing and, when returning home, about a half mile from our house our car got stuck in mud. My father carried now-four-year-old me and Mom carried baby brother as they walked the rest of the way home … in mud. I was a “chunky” kid and don’t remember my father ever carrying me that far again.

A few weeks later we moved again and I became a regular playmate with my cousin, Stuart, who was five months older than I. Cousin Stuart was and remains intellectually gifted and I remember discussions with him regarding what causes thunder and if Des Moines and Illinois were the same thing. They sound the same to a couple of young boys.

We lived on a farm and I had a taffy-colored cat. Dad was unloading a wagon of ear corn into an elevator that took the corn up into the corncrib. As the wagon lift descended my cat crawled under it. My screams were covered by the noise of the machinery and I saw my cat crushed to death. I never wanted — then or now — another cat.

The next January Dad took a job with a nearby farmers cooperative elevator and we moved into town. I turned five years old the day before we moved.

I remember our downtown second-floor apartment, particularly the stale aroma of the building, quite well. Years later, working as a reserve police officer, I assisted with a call in an older downtown apartment building and instantly recognized the odor. It wasn’t necessarily a bad smell, but it was memorable.

The next big event was the birth of another brother and enrolling in kindergarten. There’s nothing special about remembering events after turning five years old.

A good memory can be nice but there’s a downside to the gift. I can also remember unpleasant things.

In first grade we did not have individual desks, but rather sat on small chairs around long, low tables. At the end of a lunch recess I was sitting on the end of one of those tables when the teacher called the class to order. Not realizing my weight had lifted the opposite end of the table, I moved quickly to my chair unintentionally allowing the opposite end of the table to slam to the floor.

My teacher assumed I had done this on purpose and ordered me to stand in the corner for punishment. So it was I learned about injustice at the tender age of six.

The ability to remember early childhood events has done little for my intellectual pursuits but it sure has come in handy for writing personal columns.

Now, where did I leave my glasses?

Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. © 2025 by Huisman Communications.