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Your obsessions when you were a child? (Or your child's obsessions?)

When I was younger, it was all about the planets/stars (basic astronomy) and the space program (I knew all the missions and astronauts). I went to space camp (twice) and wanted to work for NASA someday (in mission control, not as an astronaut for some reason).

My other obsession was dinosaurs (after watching Jurassic Park) and sea animals (I really liked whales, and had a strangely large whale stuffed animal collection). Ninja turtles is another that comes to mind.

I had rather boyish obsessions. But those are the more normal ones.

I also particularly loved fish bait (the rubbery, plastic gummy ones). I collected those obsessively for no apparent reason (I've never fished in my life) and often carried one around with me. The one that almost got out of control was my dice collection. Hundreds of different types of dice...I would look for them obsessively, carry them around in a giant basket, dump them out and arrange them in patterns or groups.I also did the same thing with plastic hair clips later on. I had/have tons of phases like that.
 
kasmanaft08 said:
When I was younger, it was all about the planets/stars (basic astronomy) and the space program (I knew all the missions and astronauts). I went to space camp (twice) and wanted to work for NASA someday (in mission control, not as an astronaut for some reason).

My other obsession was dinosaurs (after watching Jurassic Park) and sea animals (I really liked whales, and had a strangely large whale stuffed animal collection). Ninja turtles is another that comes to mind.

I had rather boyish obsessions. But those are the more normal ones.

I also particularly loved fish bait (the rubbery, plastic gummy ones). I collected those obsessively for no apparent reason (I've never fished in my life) and often carried one around with me. The one that almost got out of control was my dice collection. Hundreds of different types of dice...I would look for them obsessively, carry them around in a giant basket, dump them out and arrange them in patterns or groups.I also did the same thing with plastic hair clips later on. I had/have tons of phases like that.
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I used to have a brief interests in animals and stars. Oh, those were the days
 
kasmanaft08,

The only problem with "working in Mission Control" would be -- a lot of those positions (particularly the guys at the consoles, like CAP COM (Capsule Communicator), ARE astronauts. Either that, or engineers. That would have been fun for me, too. I remember my family went to Florida and took a tour of Kennedy Space Center....we saw the Saturn V that was separated in individual stages, and I was imagining the thing stacked back together and turned right-side-up, when my father said to me, "And you wanted to get ON ONE OF THESE THINGS when you were a kid....and what are you afraid of, again?"

Embarrassed, I said, "Heights, Dad." Somehow, I don't think that would work!! (An astronaut who was afraid of heights.) :D
 
I was obsessed with the Wizard of Oz, horror movies, and LeAnn Rimes. I actually taught myself to yodel by listening to her over and over.
 
robertwnielsen said:
kasmanaft08,

The only problem with "working in Mission Control" would be -- a lot of those positions (particularly the guys at the consoles, like CAP COM (Capsule Communicator), ARE astronauts. Either that, or engineers. That would have been fun for me, too. I remember my family went to Florida and took a tour of Kennedy Space Center....we saw the Saturn V that was separated in individual stages, and I was imagining the thing stacked back together and turned right-side-up, when my father said to me, "And you wanted to get ON ONE OF THESE THINGS when you were a kid....and what are you afraid of, again?"

Embarrassed, I said, "Heights, Dad." Somehow, I don't think that would work!! (An astronaut who was afraid of heights.) :D
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Ha, yeah, i think that's where the dream died a bit- when I actually looked it up.

Being an astronaut itself is a whole other weird route to go through, and the other options were a bit dissapointing [or daunting]. Plus i'm sure that's massively hard to get into, even if you did attempt it anyway.

Oh well. :p
 
kasmanaft08 said:
Ha, yeah, i think that's where the dream died a bit- when I actually looked it up.

Being an astronaut itself is a whole other weird route to go through, and the other options were a bit dissapointing [or daunting]. Plus i'm sure that's massively hard to get into, even if you did attempt it anyway.

Oh well. :p
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Yeah, it's very hard to get into -- to be a pilot/commander, you have to have at least 4,000 hours of test-pilot flight time. But yeah, the program is harder than all get out to get into. (Plus, considering our manned space flight program is, for all intents and purposes, shut down, it makes it that much harder. I mean, I know there's going to be a new class of astronauts in training, but I have a hard time understanding it, since there won't be a vehicle available for them to fly.) :)
 
Maps/geography/weather. I loved looking at maps related to geography. Then I started looking at weather maps as a teenager. Now I'm looking at other sort of maps... I have no idea why, but anything "mappy" with networks and stuff is just fascinating.

Sorry to perpetuate the stereotype, but as a kid I was obsessed with trains...I loved collecting toy trains, riding the train, and watching the train pass by.
 
I remember that I only cared for diagrams, maps and those exploded view schematics of things. At the school library I only borrowed books that had those pictures in it. I remember there was one book that had 2 page subway station "cut in half" so you could see what went where and the entire lay-out. I also remember getting into trouble a lot cause we couldn't get a new book for 2 weeks. So I was stuck with these, and when we had our reading sessions I'd end up looking pictures instead of reading.

Maps and such went through to having an interest in toytrains, not cause of the trains, but cause of the entire scenery and diorama's set up in stores and toycatalogues. Also; lego catalogues; they used to have these large displays in them.

When I was really young I had an interest in cars and could tell brand and type of car by the vaguest of visual information I had; for instance just looking at a headlight.

Recently; I was at the attic and I found some homework I did when I was 11. It was about hobby's and interests. At that time I wanted to learn to play guitar; and even wrote I listened to my favorite bands for roughly 3 to 4 hours a day. So in a way, the large amounts of time I spend with music, and that interest were prevalent as a kid already, and still are now.

Oh, and wrestling. I saw the first Wrestlemania when I was 4 or so (Wrestlemania 2) and didn't really miss a lot of WWF programming what was on tv back then. My dad was/is big into it, so I watched that with him. Later he bought magazines in german and I read those (thus learning to improve my german as a kid). But since we only had WWF on tv here, I wasn't really aware of other companies, though it changed a bit due to the magazines.

And I did have an unhealthy obsession with my toys. To me, there was more to it than "just an action figure". To me they were personalities, and I read and collected the datacard that used to come on the cardboard it was packaged on with vigor. Seriously.. if back then the internet was like it is now... I would've spend so much more time on reading up on things. But hey... it was the late 80's. In school I always was this weird walking toyencyclopedia.

Dinosaurs were a little obsession. Maybe it was a bit due to availability on books and such that enabled that.

And last but not least, I remember that I used to spend a lot of time drawing concepts and levels for gamedesign. Mostly platformgames. I didn't care for drawing itself, but I cared for drawing out the levels... and if drawing were the means to do it; then yes... I'd pick up the pencil and paper.

A thing that never stuck to me, but I'm sure it would have is comics. That was mostly because there were either no comicbookstores in the area or I didn't have money to buy so (and my parents rather buy me a magazine about dinosaurs, or buy me a GI joe action figure, instead of a comicbook)
 
OBSESSIONS AS A CHILD

Thomas The Tank Engine (1991-1994)

Yep... another train fanatic in the chatroom! I had all the toys from Edward to Terence and recited lines from Percy Takes The Plunge in unwelcome situations :-o

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (1995-6)

I used to love this show. And I wanted to be Tommy growing up! Got in trouble for dancing like Zach- eventually got a note to my parents. I remember- it was a difficult time, a different time when this show was still popular. It was banned in New Zealand when kids got the idea that ALL problems can be solved with violence. Over here? Not so much... I can still hear Miss Venables shouting at me after I'd declared my undying love for Kimberley.
Yoshi's Story (1998)

When Yoshi burst onto the Nintendo 64, you just couldn't get away from him. He was on TV, on T-shirts and everything. I even tried to order a complete set of Yoshi Dolls from the UK, my Dad caught me on the phone and... well my ears are still ringing from that. Eventually it got to the point where my Nintendo was taken away for three months. Initially I was cool with it, but eventually I fell into depression for the first time.

Pokemon (1999-2000)

This one kind of just snuck up on me. And shoot me if I'm wrong, but I reckon it brought out the bastard in every kid who watched it. When Dad refused to buy me the Yellow Version on Game Boy, I put on an Academy Award Winning Performance. Eventually I got over it and realised the whole thing was just a shameless cash in. After Pokemon 2000: The Movie came out I kind of lost interest. The idea of Ash and Misty getting together was stupid. They hated each other's guts, right?

So there you have it. Four of my obsessions as a child. And that's just to name a few. There were other games and movies, but too many to mention. And let's not even talk about the boy band phase I went through!
 
I had lots and lots of obsessions but the ones I can vividly remember are;

Mimicking famous people
Michael Jackson
My little pony
Care bears
Animals of farthing wood
Coins
Stamps
Making up dance routines
The film dumbo - I watched it so many times my mum had to replace the video 3 times because they kept getting damaged from overuse
History - particularly ancient Egypt
UFO's and anything weird (my aunt gave me some books on strange mysteries, UFO's, freaks of nature etc and that was it intense interest for a good few months if not a year or so)

Crafts - I would pick a new craft to try and do every few weeks, try to master it, couldn't because I'm rubbish with my hands and give up and move on to another, that lasted about a year

Memory training - My dad had an obsession with memory training and we would listen to tapes of lists of words over and over and then we'd repeat them back to each other, I loved doing that

Making lists and schedules - I loved planning what I was going to be doing, or making lists of things





My 6 year old daughter's current obsessions;

Monster high (the past year)
Teddy bears (lifelong)
The smurfs game (the past week but it's easing off)
Michael Jackson - (varying degrees of intenseness over the past year) she's gets stuck on certain songs or music videos, at the moment she watches her moonwalker dvd over and over


Her previous obsessions;
Meerkats (lasted about 7 months)
Hello kitty (from age 3 to just before her 6th birthday)
The buddies films (about 2 months)
The sooty show (4 months)
Harry potter (about 2 months watching the same film over and over for a few weeks before moving onto another HP film)
Various TV programmes or films that would be watched over and over again until she moved onto another (since she was about 2)
 
Killing demons.
Comparative religion.
Pokemon.
Stuffed animals.
Frogs.
Exploring the swamps.
Drawing my cartoon "Swamp City."
Reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" over and over and over.
Being sure to dress like a boy.
My Atlas.
 
Knives, Axes, Fireworks (Taking apart fireworks and making BIGGER fireworks... bombs :lol2:), Making fires in the woods; Melting plastic toys in the fires in the woods, Anything military, WWII, Ninjas and ninja weapons, Animals (cats, hamsters,fish), Star Wars, Collecting patches (I was in Boy Scouts until I was 17), Dumpster-diving at local manufacturing complexes, Collecting fossils in the creekbeds...

Many/Most of these I have outgrown it seems. I still love cats and knives, though.

Cats & Knives. :cute:
 
My number one obsession and one that caused me a lot of grief, was horses.

Also highways and highway signs, commercial aviation, tornadoes, religion . . . I don't like to call them obsessions, I like to call them intense interests, but apparently it's not considered normal to be intently interested in anything. In fact the less interested you are in things the more normal you are.
 
I've had many obsessions here and there...but one that I carried through out my entire (ok, maybe not entire, since about 13-14 :) ) life - foretelling, in childhood, before I found out about Tarot cards, I liked inventing new ways of predicting the future :) too bad all my records are at my parents' house, it would be kinda fun to see them again :)
 
Toy animals, books, pretending to be a cook, music, drawing, dancing, etc.
My obsessions changed constantly, but they were intense when I was going through them.
 
NeverEnder said:
Knives, Axes, Fireworks (Taking apart fireworks and making BIGGER fireworks... bombs :lol2:), Making fires in the woods; Melting plastic toys in the fires in the woods, Anything military, WWII, Ninjas and ninja weapons, Animals (cats, hamsters,fish), Star Wars, Collecting patches (I was in Boy Scouts until I was 17), Dumpster-diving at local manufacturing complexes, Collecting fossils in the creekbeds...

Many/Most of these I have outgrown it seems. I still love cats and knives, though.

Cats & Knives. :cute:
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And, ALSO... stuffed animals. I had so many as a child and they were my only friends, really.

I still have stuffed animals, not as many, but they are special and important to me. Very much.
 
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