One of my earliest vivid memories is specifically of my 2nd birthday party, so I'm confident I wasn't actually 3 or 4. I might not quite have been 2, or I might

One of my earliest vivid memories is specifically of my 2nd birthday party, so I'm confident I wasn't actually 3 or 4. I might not quite have been 2, or I might have been a few days older than 2, but I can pinpoint my age within a couple weeks on either side. I remember details other people didn't notice or care about, like my disappointment that the teal color of the frosting on my cake was only on the surface, not all the way through (which I discovered by shoving my hands into it), and that the water was too hot when my grandma took me to wash the frosting off my hands. I remember it the same way I remember anything else. It's probable I encoded my memories verbally much earlier than most children, though. My mom made a list in my baby book of the hundred words I could use correctly on my first birthday, and I was conversational and fluent well before my second. The theory that "childhood amnesia" happens because we start encoding memories verbally and forget how to access the nonverbal ones would track with my experience. I just encoded mine verbally much earlier than most children. Most people do not have memories of being two. But some of us certainly do.