"...This is the one where 'Lenny' plays the part of the defense lawyer before he joined the main cast as a detective..."

The science of memory is fascinating- how it is formed, how it is distorted, how it can impact a person's life....

I once met a person that claimed he had no memories of his childhood before age 6- I was shocked, and incredulous- then other people we were with made similar claims- for some the cutoff age was 4...

Of course I recognized that memories of early childhood become more sparse the further back you go, and that at some point they cease to be available for recall, but to remember nothing before age 4 or 6 seemed bizarre to me-

I started looking into 'childhood amnesia' and found that it is the norm...

I have numerous memories that date back before I could talk, I have a vivid memory of my great grandfather and his house - he died when I was around 1 and my memory would have had to have been a bit earlier than that.

There is another memory I have that would have to be from the age of 7 months, but unlike the one of my great grandfather it lacks the details to prove it is a real memory...

My pre-verbal memories are very different from later ones... they are like snapshots where the surrounding space and time is compressed into a single memory...

The memory of my great grandfather for instance:

I am beside the old blue car with the white top my parents had when I was that age- I know this but in my memory I was not looking at the car, I am in a light-blue coat. I am staring at a puddle, road oil is forming a rainbow pattern on its surface, my parents are talking to my great grandfather on his porch. The carport by his trailer has a roof made of green translucent corrugated plastic that casts a green hue on the cars parked under it... there is a special garden behind his trailer. As part of the same snapshot my great grandfather is holding me up to look at the door frame of a closet door near his kitchen, his very old hand is pointing out a winged bug (termite, I think) crawling on the door frame.

There is no sequence of events in the memory- no 'first this happened, then this happened next' its all just one snapshot.

The 'memory' that I think is even earlier has only enough detail to pinpoint when it must have been if it were real.

I was in a backpack carrier in a mountainous area on a rocky dirt trail- the carrier had been set down on the trail and a woman with short blonde hair is kneeling down talking at me... the memory has the same 'snapshot' quality as the one of my great-grandfather. I am facing the uphill direction of the trail, there are sparse evergreen trees around me, the land slopes steeply down to my right- I 'remember' these details even though in my memory I am only able to see the woman and the sky behind her...

IF that memory is legitimate, it would have had to have been on my first trip to Colorado as an infant at around 7 months old. I have countless memories of events that occurred when I was two or three... some as vivid and detailed as if they were last week... there are other memories I have that have the same snapshot qualities, but lack the details needed to place them at a particular time- A memory of waking up in my crib and screaming in terror over a daddy longlegs walking towards my face... my parents running in to respond. Brief little snapshots like that...

In discussions with my family it seems that anomalously early memories runs in in my mother's side of the family.