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

I was obsessed with my future. I used to look through catalogues every day and note down what I'd buy when I had my own house. I drew my house and named my imaginary children, I even wrote down all the things I'd feed them and planned what clothes they'd wear. I was absolutely obsessed with my imaginary future family for years!

From about the age of 3 to 6 I was obsessed with the film ‘Tommy’. Really no idea why I was even allowed to watch it…..

Penguins.
I loved Christmas as there was loads more penguin stuff out there.

Sharks! And it’s never ended. I love Sharks, the bigger and more ferocious the better. People are so surprised by this as I’m considered pretty “girlie” but top of my bucket list is to do a cage dive with great whites!

I had an obsession with a thing called “presto fix”. You made pictures on boards out of little pieces. I would take the pieces and line them up in groups for hours. Sorted by shape and colour. Once I had sorted them, I mixed them all up and started again. I still have them in my loft.
I counted the dotted white lines in the middle of the road whilst we were driving. I also counted lampposts.
I assigned every letter of the alphabet a numerical value between 1 and 10 and then added up the letters in sentences when they were spoken to me.
I collected things - stickers, erasers, Winnie the Pooh memorabilia, things like that.

I discovered I was autistic a few years ago.

I did that too!

I loved sharks, Jaws was my favorite film, I must have watched it way too young. I would look at old shark books from the library, I knew all about them.

I wanted to be a figure skater but our nearest ice rink was miles away. I’d get books out the library and memorise the names of the jumps and spins etc.
never got chance to learn though but I love watching it on the telly when it’s on and can still impress my partner by saying ‘that’s a so and so spin’ haha

I spent my pocket money at 8/9 years old buying auto trader magazines. I fancied a bright red escort cosworth and was saving up for one. I needed to keep an eye on the market to see how much saving up was required.
I also used to buy this yellow paper, It was a paper full of adverts of things for sale, cars, furniture, puppies, everything. I think it might have been called free ads or something like that.
The adverts would go something like this: blue floral sofa for sale, very good condition, £75. Please call mrs smith on xxx viewings welcome. This was pre internet and no photos in the paper so you had to imagine what the sofa looked like. I used to circle the adverts I quite liked the sound of. I spent hours doing this.
PS I never did get a cosworth.

Wow that is actually one hell of an acolade…I’m super impressed …and I thought I was something special for being able to sing every single word of Phorever People by the Shamen 😂x

I loved thistledown, those fairy like structures that carry seeds. I’d collect them, store them in those wine cardboard boxes with twelve areas, give each one a name, take them out to ‘fly’ individually each day, then tuck them in at night 😀

Bit of a random one, but I used to love names, everytime I heard one I liked I’d write it down. I was also obsessed with Saturday morning tv, it was the best back then
ds18 is autistic he’s had a few intense interests over the years. Started with Thomas the tank engine, moved onto hot wheels. Then he became obsessed with all things rollercoasters and titanic, to the point he can tell you every detail. He still watches titanic every year on its anniversary. Loves sloths, still now has about 50 sloth teddies. Super interested in I wanna say natural disasters, and big events is the right word.

I had a thing where once I was in bed I had to basically tell the story of my day to myself, in my head. So ‘the little girl got up, got dressed, went to school’ that sort of thing. It was almost like prayer. I don’t know why I did it but also felt like if I didn’t then something bad would happen. Looking back I definitely think I had some OCD traits as a child. I also had to repeatedly go back and check things like taps and whether I’d flushed the toilet. Had to literally stare at it for a set amount of time and then go back and check again.
Also I’d worry myself sick over really odd things. I once accidentally kicked my friend in the chest while we were messing about and spent an entire summer worrying that she was going to die because of me.
Ive grown up into quite an anxious person but it’s manageable. When I look back on my habits and mindset as a little girl it makes me really sad.
Sorry to derail a lighthearted thread 🙈

My brother and I loved the Crystal Maze, and devised games for each other.
I loved activities involving being blindfolded, and I was always looking through books of party games and science experiments for them. The only time we did any at school was to test our directional hearing. I especially liked the one involving being guessing whether I was being poked with one or two pencils, and which parts of the body had enough nerve endings to tell.

I’m also autistic and had many strange interests as a child, including craneflies and frogs (I made factfiles, sketches, knew just about everything there was to know about them), pebbles (used to collect them, categorise them and carry the nicest ones in my coat pockets, so many that my mum had to keep mending the pockets. I like the weight of them), playing the recorder (I taught myself and zoomed through the whole set of the Abracadabra Recorder books - practising in the garden shed when my mum couldn’t take it any longer), and I’d have some kind of ambitious craft project on the go all the time. We had a weaving loom at school for a few weeks as part of topic work, and I constructed my own one at home out of cardboard. It actually worked and I wove a whole set of placemats. I was never bored and as an adult I’m still always busy with something.

In the run up to the millennium I was 10, turned 11 just before it. There was a lot in the news about Nostradamus predicting the end of the world and I fixated on it quite badly. Had nightmare and so on.

It’s only in my 30’s I’ve been able to watch any of the “end of the world” genre of films such as Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow etc

Omg prestofix, I had forgotten about that!
I also did the counting white lines and lampposts.
I have this weird counting obsession, for example, say there was a sentence with eight words in it - I’d count 8 (for the words), then add 7 (for the spaces in between the words), 2 (for the space at either end of the sentence) and then 1 (to sum up the whole sentence), so the number of that sentence would be 18.

ive often wondered if I should get an assessment for autism 🤣

I was also bizarrely obsessed with wolves as a child.

Me too- I was obsessed with keeping my socks white. I thought the worst thing that could happen was my socks getting dirty. I wasn't bothered about the rest of my clothes!

Fairies. It was my dream to see one in real life. I did see one in a dream once which I thought was halfway there. I read hundreds of Enid Blyton books about fairies, pixies and elves, admired my mum's book about Flower Fairies, pretended I had magical powers and left little notes and gifts in the garden for fairies. The girl next door was very into fairy stuff as well, although she probably grew out of it before I did.

I developed an obsession with football around the time of the 1978 World Cup. It was most unlike me, but it didn't come completely from nowhere, for my best friend at school was football mad, I took an interest to be sociable, and next thing I knew I was collecting Panini stickers and newspaper cuttings and commandeering the television for matches involving countries I hadn't known existed until a month or two earlier. It took around a year to fizzle out.

I was obsessed with poltergeists. (I used to read a lot of YA horror when I was far too Y and nowhere near A, and graduated to Stephen King by the time I was about 12. My mum had to sign a thing to allow me to borrow them from the library.) I had a note book where I kept a detailed record of “poltergeist activity”. This was mainly when something in the house had been moved by a poltergeist, aka my parents or brother, or any odd light things, like a bulb about to blow and flickering. I also used to set “traps” with eg spilled salt on a counter, or a bit of thread taped over a door to see if a poltergeist moved it. If I’d had a camera to record with I would have been really dangerous.

@flubber975 i can really relate to your post. I remember so many things keeping me awake as a little girl. One day a boy in my class and I “got married” at playtime and I kissed him, then spent a miserable time wondering if I had caught AIDS. So many similar stories. I’m also a very anxious adult.

I taught myself (to some degree) semaphore, Morse code, sign language, Welsh and Greek.