When I was around four, my family was on a plane to London that was relatively bumpy. To say the least, our stomaches weren't the happiest fliers. After we landed, I remember this long carpeted corridor, probably the path leading out from the gates. I was really bad with planes then because of an earlier bad experience, but I felt proud of myself for not getting sick. My dad, however, did get really sick and had to go to the bathroom to throw up. Maybe I was just fascinated by the fact that my dad was the one feeling sick in my place, I'm not quite sure.
I think that I was a lot more upfront as a child than I am now as an adult. I daresay that I was also quite a bit more irritable and demanding, as some children often are.
My earliest memory is similar because I was about the same age at the time of my memory as you were in yours. Additionally, our memories are both of events that are out of the ordinary. However, my memory was of a traumatic event that happened to me, whereas your memory is of a disturbing event that happened to someone close to you.
My earliest memory also involved travel, and it was my idea originally that perhaps the experiencing of new environments was what made it memorable. Though that may also be the case here, as far as I can tell this memory seems to be a pretty cool combination of early childhood stimuli: flying at a young age, traveling to a new place, negative psychical stimuli (nausea), and the realization that your parents are not the invincible ideal we come to believe they are. This is pretty interesting; my memory was based on visiting a new place and a novel physical stimuli (an amusement park ride).
I've always wondered what decided what exact early memories we maintain.
