I had 2 obsessions starting around the first grade. The first one was national statistics, and the other one was animals of all kinds. Everything I learned came from encyclopedias,
As a youngster I was really into outer space - the Apollo missions, the solar system, etc.
When I was around 11 or 12 I became really interested in World War 2. I read everything the library had about it.
I still find both these topics fascinating, although I now have a lot of other interests as well.
At age 5-6, eagles. I could name harpy eagles, various kinds of eagles. I would also draw from Audobon’s Birds of North America, a thick book that I had to push on the carpet to get to the living room where I would then try to replicate the pictures with pencil and paper.
Also airplanes as well, to the point where I cried at age 5 or so when we had to disembark from a Boeing 747 after a thirteen-hour flight across the Pacific because I didn’t want to get off the plane.
It was cars for me. I always wanted to get books about cars from the library and Book Fair. I could identify the majority of cars on the road. I was always drawing pictures of cars in my spare time in school. I started building model cars around age 10. I was never that good at it; I always overused the glue and often ended up with gluey fingerprints on the outside, but I enjoyed building them. I’m sure if Pixar had come out with Cars when I was 5 it would have been my favorite movie.
Ballet. I wanted lessons in the worst way, but there was no money for lessons. One of our neighbors was luckier, and after her recitals, she’d give her costumes to me. I checked out library books and learned all the hand and feet positions, and a few steps. Then I’d swipe a classical record from my mom’s stash, put it on my record player in the basement, and dance.
As and aside, when I got to college, I took ballet as a PE credit and I sucked at it.
My granddaughter had the same obsession. Every day when she got home from school she would put on her ballet outfit. I don’t know why she never took lessons; her parents gave her music lessons but not dance. Maybe she just liked the outfits, she always wore a feather boa with her ballet dress.
When I was 11 I wrote to the Federal Secretary of the Interior requesting the location of nearby buffalo farms I could visit.
I also wrote to the Pope requesting that he allow females to be priests and explained what I thought was my priestly vocation at the time.
I suspect that I had an obsession with writing letters to powerful entities to elicit a response.
Flags and Abraham Lincoln.
NASA and prime time TV stars of the 60s. I sent fan letters to everyone I could think of and acquired quite a collection of publicity photos and autographs.
What, am I the first former Horse Girl to speak up? I never had a horse, but I loved them an incredible amount and immersed myself in horse lore of all kinds from ages 5 to about 11 (when I discovered boys).
In fact, my daughter was reading something about Icelandic horses the other day and she mentioned that they’re about 14 hands high, but was going to look up what that is in inches. I was walking past and held my hand at the right height (she didn’t believe me until she measured).
When I was in primary school, our teacher had a sort of little library thing going on at the back of the classroom. On Friday afternoons, we were allowed to borrow books for the weekend if we were done with our work.
There was a series of old encyclopedia-type volumes the size of a phone book, and I remember reading them avidly. The organisation was quite interesting. You had a dozen pages on, say, characters from Shakespeare, followed by a dozen pages on the steam engine, then Greek mythology, then the solar system, etc. They were already very dated by the time I read them in the mid-80s, but that’s probably where I picked up my interest for trivia. I also remember really liking the old-fashioned illustrations (drawings, not a single photograph).
But my first obsessions were astronomy, and… Michael Jackson.
Trucks. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a truck driver. When I was 10, my family and I moved to a new city; after the movers had unloaded our stuff into our new home, they gave me a ride around the block in the cab of their truck with them. That was an awesome day for me.
40+ years later, my wish these days would be to score a VIP ride with the Blue Angels…
I loved reading roleplaying game manuals as a kid (starting with the D&D Basic set in 1981). I was only mildly interested in actually playing the games, but I was obsessed with reading the rules and creating characters.
Age 9-13, I was obsessed with WW2 pilots. Had books about them, and built model airplanes which were painted to match specific missions or pilots’ planes.
My fascination never actually died and eventually hanging around folks who restored planes paid off. I got some left seat time in a B-17, and got to meet and have dinner with Gabby Gabreski.
Me too! I received an autographed 8x10 of Pat Paulsen, among others.
I also was a schemer. There was a newspaper column in the comics called Johnny Wonder where kids could submit their questions. I sat down and came up with a perfect question that would fit the column; “what is the difference between a frog and a toad?” I knew the answer and actually thought it was stupid, but I knew they’d use it. I was right. The newspaper sent me a globe.
I was a reading kid. It was all I ever wanted to do, and I took particular interest in scary books. When I was ten, I received a copy of Gone With the Wind for Christmas. I finished it in three days, turned back to the beginning and started again. I had read it several more times by age 12, and was able to recite long stretches of it.
That’s awesome!
Back in those days the newspapers opened up the world for us.
Sounds like you had a fun time. It was so exciting to get those responses.
I was so excited to get a response on official letterhead from the Department of the Interior and the actual buffalo farm locations. My father took us for a ride to see them eventually.
I completely forgot until this post jogged my memory – due to my obsession with cars I wanted to be a race car driver. I’m sure I picked that solely because it was car related. As I got a bit older I realized that wasn’t a realistic career aspiration and decided I wanted to be an auto mechanic instead, since that was also car related. Today I am neither of those things.
Yeah, I’m not a truck driver either.
I was obsessed with statistics since my earliest memories, I still am. After my divorce when I was 40 yrs old I sold my business and decided to take a new course in life with no idea with what that might be. California had some kind of program where they would test you and then line you up with jobs that you were well suited for. Upon completion of my test the counselor looked surprised when he came back and asked me why I was even there, he said I could do anything I wanted to do. He sent me on an interview to be a statutory, I had no idea what that even was. The interviewer gave me more tests and said I passed them with flying colors but he wasn’t going to give me the job because I just didn’t look like the type that could sit behind a desk all day crunching numbers. When I found out what the job actually was, I was kicking myself for not going to greater lengths to look the part because that was exactly what I do enjoy doing all day long. So I went back to being a truck mechanic.