11.
I used to watch my nephew when he was about 3 or 4. One day he was at my house and pointed to a magnet of Arizona – it had a picture of the desert with rock formations. Kid pointed at it and asked where it was. He said he used to live by “red rocks like that with his first family” who all had straight, dark hair (his is blond and curly… now) and that he had a mom and a dad and he had had a brother until he went too far into the desert too close to dark and got eaten by “not dogs, not wolves but smaller”. I said “coyotes”? And he kind of mouthed the word and said, “oh, that’s what you call them.” Then he was sad and didn’t want to talk about it anymore so we had lunch and that was the first and last time he mentioned it.
12.
Was watching an old video of a jazz drummer playing a solo. No idea who it was but he was really good. My daughter, probably age three, was looking over my shoulder for minute before she said “I used to play the drums like that when I was a man”.
13.
When he was around 4, my grandson used to talk about his job at the ice factory. One day he was talking about his boss “Farvo” and the day he quit. I asked him why he quit and he turned to me and quite passionately said “I’ll tell you why I quit! They made me work 15 days in a row without a break and I had enough of that!” It was weird hearing all that righteous anger coming out of that little boy.
14.
My little brother said when he was 3 or 4: When I was a grown up, I went to war, and I never came back.
15.
I was driving my family across the state to visit family. Some commercial on the radio about Vegas came on and I started singing “Vivaaaaaa Las Vegas” in my best Elvis impersonation. My son was about 3-4 and he says “I don’t like Vegas. I lost my life and a lot of money there.” His mom and I glanced at each other like “WTF?” He never said anything else about it.
16.
When my son was 4 we had driven past a cemetery. He asked me if I remembered when he died and was buried. I said no and asked him what he meant by saying that. He said he had died, was buried in a cemetery and that’s when he started growing in my belly. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up when he said this. He doesn’t remember say this.
17.
My middle son (5) is named after my wife’s grandfather.
He just looked at her a couple of weeks ago and said “I remember when you were little and you sat on my lap.”
He also once gazed into my mother in law’s eyes (at 3-4 years old), stroked her cheek and said “my daughter.”
18.
My coworker has a son who, when he was about 3, told her he used to grow rice and lived in a place where two rivers met. He was able to name the rivers, and she located it on a map of East Asia. Pretty wild.
19.
When our son was maybe 3 or 4 he described his life as a ballerina on stage – from the lights, to the music, to the applause. His next words chilled me to the bone “I was at a party on a boat, and I fell into the water, then POOF I was here.” I asked him to relate the story when his father came back from a business trip a couple weeks later, and it was identical. But after that we never discussed it again. I didn’t want to go there.
20.
None of mine have, but back pre-pandemic I was watching my friends then three year old for her and he saw a big military ship and he got this kind of far away look and said “I remember when my boat sank. There were so many sharks.” I said what? He blinked said what, and then started asking questions about the boat. I mentioned it to my friend and she said “yeah, he does that sometimes.”
