What's your first memory of a laser pointer?

I'll go for the brass ring here (although I'm sure there are a few ol' timers here that can beat this!)

My first laser memory was in the small lab the company my dad worked for had set up just for him. The year was 1970. My dad picked me up from school and we swung by his lab so he could grab a few things. Two of my earliest memories are from that night: the poka-poka-poka of a vacuum pump, and the beam (it was pretty dark) from what I now think was probably a SP127 HeNe.

When I was 16 or 17 I worked at a mcDonalds that shared a building with a gas station. One time the gas station was selling red laser pointers, the kind that used button batteries, with an assortment of pattern caps, for 20 or 30 $. So I bought one there and had lots of fun with it, till one of my bitchy mcd managers took it away and stored in the managers office because I was playing with it at work, lol. I don't know if I ever got it back. This would be back in the mid 90's. I am 35 now

My first ever laser was back in 2012. It was a 1mw 532nm, and it fascinated me. It is the reason why I got into the hobby.

Interesting question. I'll add a few points to your rep too.

The first real use of a laser pointer that I remember was by a doctor we went to back in the 1980's and 90's. I don't remember exactly when, but he started using a low power red laser pointer to promote wound and scar healing.

A year or two after that I found a 1-2 mW red (probably 650 or 670 nm) pointer for about $180 which I bought to experiment with. I started researching and found that doctors in Japan were using lasers for that purpose too so I decided maybe there was something to that use. I can't say with certainty that it's effective for healing, but I still use it and others like it for that purpose.

Then about 6 or 7 years ago I was googling and discovered how powerful and less expensive laser pointers have become and I really started getting hooked into playing and experimenting with them.

Ed

I remember my first coolest pointer was not like pointers today. I bought it in 1998 when doing postdoc in UCSC from a kind of scientific catalogue.

It was a red pointer with short thick body and 3 button cells, but the coolest thing about was that it had 2 mirrors inside, one of which was on a kind of a shaky leg.

In this way it was not a still dot pointer, but a "laser show which never stops".
In shaky hands or after a small movement the dot became a non-stop changing ring, oval or other type of LaserShow pattern for maybe 1-2 min untill the mirror ceased to shake.

Unfortunately I lost it after moving from country to country. Would like to buy a such thing again but do not know how it could be called in google to differenciate from ordinary LPs and if such a cheap, simple and super efficient design is still being produced!

Now they better sell a chinese LS with servos for 300usd instead.

EDIT: If anyone had such a pointer please reply! Maybe they can still be found in bazars and garage sales.