What strange obsessions did you have as a child?

[ThePineappleSeahorse]

I saw this on Reddit earlier and I thought that I’d ask Mumsnetters about their childhood obsessions.

I’m autistic so I had many obsessions, too many to count but to name a few, I was obsessed with Spring-Heeled Jack after reading Terry Deary’s True Monster Stories and I was fascinated with the Kray twins after watching the 1990 movie when I was much too young 10 or 11) at a friend’s home. And I was also weirdly obsessed with Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suites and Dick Turpin.

What were your odd childhood interests?

Tia

being a detective. I even made fingerprint power. Pre-internet I’m still pretty pleased with the kit I built for myself from scratch.

Horror stories, the nastier the better. Anything to do with folk horror. Zombies, monsters, murder, historical events like the French Revolution/torture.

I didn't grow up to be a psychopath, somehow. I still love horrible things though.

That’s amazing! I’m very impressed and rather envious.

I used to pretend to be a travel agent. I borrowed my dads invoices from work and used these as enquiry forms and used to collect holiday brochures from travel agents and price up holidays for all my imaginary customers 😂 I thought I was a young kid when I used to do this then realised based on where we lived, that I was at least 11 😂

Was also obsessed with my grandads true crime magazine. I was in equal parts terrified/ enthralled by the stories. Probably completely inappropriate for me to be reading them!

I was obsessed with pure white socks and would spend my pocket money on them.

Thanks all. I love how weird kids are.

My hobby as a ten year old, was to walk around the village writing down my 'collection' of number plate numbers.

Sad!

That’s quite cute actually.

Not an obsession, but I remember a car journey where me and my cousin made a list of all the car registrations we'd seen (just the first/last letter).

I was ridiculously into "Starsky and Hutch"😂

I love the travel agent one 😅

I was an Enid Blyton fan and fancied myself as a detective. Also identified as trans aged 8 and wanted to be a boy thanks to George/Georgina in the Famous Five. Thankfully grew out of that but I have a good friend called Georgina now and I'm secretly jealous of her name 🤣

I started a secret diary making up my own language/code. It was incredibly complex and I gave up quickly but revised it numerous times. My entries were so boring though. I also played detective where my friends and I would stalk someone local, writing down their movements every day and coming up with theories of where they went or what they did at home. I used to play 'orphanage' with all my dolls, I'd be the orphanage owner and I'd be minding all of them. I also made a lot of radio shows on cassettes discussing my favourite books or whatever, basically podcasts in the 1980s.

I was an elf from Lord of the Rings. I had little elastic bands on my ears to make them pointy and tried to learn elvish.
I was embarrassingly over the age of 9 and got ridiculed for ages at school, but to this day I can quote the whole of the first film which is an accolade I will wear with pride 😂

Horses. Absolutely batshit crazy over them. I remember having a watch from Argos that had two horses heads on it and i loved it. It vanished one day when I had to take it off for PE and my reaction was totally OTT. I'd buy the horse magazines, had them on my bedding ect. Still love them now
Edited to say I also used to sit on my wheelie bin in my riding helmet, jodhpurs & wellies pretending it was a horse. Had zero shame. Didn't give a fk what anyone thought.

I wore a doctor who scarf and weird hat covered in badges. I collected the Perishers cartoon strip and cut them out of the paper every day and stuck them in red Sylvo exercise books. I didn't think I was weird but with hindsight I was rather quirky

True Crime, I was obsessed by Jack the Ripper and kept asking any elderly person I met if they were around at that time and what they remembered about it 🙈. I had a,VHS all about it and watched it continuously! (VHS was equivalent of Netflix today if you're a youngin 😉).

The 80s was a great time to be a 6 year old kid 🤣.

Libraries and pretended to stamp books with a ballpoint pen clicking mechanism

Ivory Coast, as in the country. Researched all about it and made up an imaginary life where my family moved there. No idea what prompted this. Little oddball.

I was obsessed by our small garden pond. I named all the creatures who lived there and I made a fact file with info and stats about all the different frogs, toads, gold fish etc. I loved it. I’m not sure how weird that is really …? I was about 8.

I was a big kenneth williams fan, oooh matron.

I was also horse mad (might still be…) I made my teddies do dressage competitions riding whatever other soft toys could pretend to be horses. I think there was an elephant and a dog, possibly a lion. Used the rug in the lounge as an arena.
My dad, bless him, put together a dozen or so mini cross country jumps out of scraps of wood and I turned the back garden into a cross country course. The descent down the rockery was particularly hairy.

I was obsessed with horses too, absolutely nuts. I had several wealthy friends who owned horses but I was the one mucking out stables at the weekend to get a free ride.

Aged 12 I begged my parents to buy me a horse, my mum sternly told me 'If you want a horse, you'll have to buy it yourself'. Three years later I'd saved up enough money and showed her my Building Society book with £1000 in it.... I bought my horse 😊

Charles I 😂

^ your my sort of wierd kid.

Horror books the more gross the better, still love horror books.
Readers digest, I'm a speed reader and was a lonely kid so they got me 4 books for the price of one from the carboot sales!
Animals - I carried the A encyclopedia around my school to show my favourite dinner lady. Caught and kept huge spiders in my pencil case. Had an entire zoo at home.
Beanie babies.
Paper so I could draw, literally made my year when I was given an entire pack of printer paper and I collected paper in several colours. I still have a sketchbook problem and have many many sketch books.