Earliest memory?

I think you can tell a lot about someone by what they say they remember first.

I’m going to ask you about your earliest childhood memory.

But first, let’s see what the actor Nicholas Cage said when someone asked him for his:

"Let me think. Listen, I know this sounds really far out and I don’t know if it’s real or not, but sometimes I think I can go all the way back to ‘in-utero’ and feeling like I could see faces in the dark or something.

I know that sounds powerfully abstract, but that somehow seems like maybe it happened."

You can tell a lot about people by how they answer this question.

Here’s another example. This is Reeve Lindbergh Brown, who was the youngest child of Charles Lindbergh. (It’s from a 1977 interview):

"My earliest memory is of telling someone in nursery school that my father was famous, and not quite knowing why."

Pretty wild, and it tells you there was never a time when she wasn’t aware that she was the daughter of the most well-known person of his era.

I’ve got another good one — well, “good” but actually terrible. It’s Pat Conroy, novelist behind The Great Santini, Lords of Discipline, Prince of Tides, and other works, most of which are semi-autobiographical:

"My father, a Marine Corps fighter pilot … waged war against the Japanese, the North Koreans, the Vietnamese and his family.

My first memory: my mother trying to stab my father with a butcher knife while he was beating her. I knew this was going to be a long and involved life."

I mean, damn!

I have a few more to share:

"My earliest memory is being at my grandfather's inauguration. My sister and I were little—we were in first grade—and we didn't quite understand the significance of it. … We loved balloons and the parade."

That was Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of one president and granddaughter of another. And here’s Akbar Ahmed, a Pakistani-American author and diplomat who began a review of a book about the history of the city of Karachi, Pakistan like this:

"My first memory is of a train journey from Delhi to Karachi in August 1947.

I was 4 years old, and our family, along with hundreds of thousands of other Muslim refugees, was heading to the new country of Pakistan. We were lucky to have survived the killing fields of Punjab. ... For us, Karachi symbolized hope and optimism."

One more, then I’ll explain why I’m doing this. It’s from Jane Coaston, who writes an opinion column for the New York Times:

“My earliest memory — I was probably 2 or 3 — is of being in my bedroom, complete with Baby Mickey Mouse bedding, forced to take a nap ...

My feeling then — one that I would come to know well over those early years — was of annoyance. I did not enjoy being small and spending family occasions staring at people’s knees. I hated it when people spoke to me as if I were a small child (even though I was).

The worst part was not being taken seriously.”

How perfect is it that an opinion columnist says her earliest memory is of being annoyed at not being taken seriously as a toddler?

OK, let’s talk about why I’m sharing these stories and also (more important) why I’m asking you to share yours in the comments, if you’re willing.

First, because I think it will be fun and interesting. But second, it’s a bit of an experiment.

I’ve wanted for a while to develop a way to enable lots of people to record their personal life stories, so they can share them with family and friends.

Now, I think I’ve come close to figuring out how to do it. And, I’d like to use our community to gauge interest and see if it works.

What’s the first question you might ask in a project like this?

It might well be: What’s your earliest memory?

I’ll go first (my answer is in the comments), and I invite you to do the same. Here’s the link to add your thoughts!

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7 other things …

• Caroline Ellison, a key witness in the FTX case, was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday for her role in one of the largest financial frauds in history. Ellison, 29, a former crypto executive, had pleaded guilty to multiple charges in connection with the federal fraud and conspiracy case involving the crypto trading platform. She cooperated with prosecutors and was a key witness during the trial last year of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, her former boyfriend. (ABC News)

• The Justice Department (DOJ) on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Visa, alleging that the company maintained an illegal monopoly over the U.S. debit card market. According to the DOJ's complaint, more than 60% of debit card transactions in the U.S. run on Visa's debit network, which allows the company to charge over $7 billion in fees each year for processing those transactions. (Fox Business)

• Missouri executed Marcellus "Khaliifah" Williams on Tuesday in the 1998 killing of a former newspaper reporter, according to the inmate's attorney, despite a prosecutor in the case and the family of the victim saying his life should be spared. Williams, 55, was convicted in the Aug. 11, 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle. No DNA ever connected Williams to the crime scene. In recent months, a prosecutor in the case said the execution should have been called off, and in a clemency petition, Gayle's family said that they "define closure as Marcellus being allowed to live." (USA Today)

• Police in northern Switzerland said Tuesday that several people have been detained and a criminal case opened in connection with the suspected death of a person in a "suicide capsule." Swiss law allows assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no "external assistance" and those who help the person die do not do so for "any self-serving motive," according to a government website. (AP)

• California became the 14th state to require schools to limit or ban the use of smartphones, amid a growing consensus that excess usage can increase the risk of mental illness and impair learning. Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law on Monday. (Reuters)

• The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday proposed prohibiting key Chinese software and hardware in connected vehicles on American roads due to national security concerns - a move that would effectively bar nearly all Chinese cars from entering the US market. The Biden administration has raised serious concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on US drivers and infrastructure through connected vehicles as well as about potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the internet and navigation systems. (The Telegraph)

• Finland will return two giant pandas to China in November, more than eight years ahead of time, as the zoo where they live can no longer afford their upkeep, the chair of the zoo's board said. The pandas, named Lumi and Pyry, were brought to Finland in January 2018, months after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the Nordic country and signed a joint agreement on protecting the animals. (Yahoo News)

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Thanks for reading. Photo credit: Jakub Kriz on Unsplash. Don’t forget about sharing your earliest memories in the comments!