What was your hobby as a child you still do now?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Mine is photography.

My older sister saved up Bazooka Joe gum wrappers in 1975 and bought me my first camera. I was six. I don’t remember what kind it was, but it was all plastic, ultra cheap, took shitty photos, and used 126 film. I loved it. The next day (Christmas) I hung signs around the house that pointed to my photo “studio” and I took everyone’s portrait.

Today I’m a serious amateur who makes a handful of money shooting special events, and my specialty is portraiture. I regularly carry around multiple thousands of dollars of equipment. I have about 150,000 photos stored on my computer. (And backed up in a bank vault.)

You?

2

I’ve loved stories since I was a toddler. When I was six I finally realized that not only where people able to enjoy reading stories, they could write their own. I started writing fiction then, and I still do.

3

Well, suffice it to say that I grew up in a very poor household, and if I hadn’t been born a boy I wouldn’t have had any hobbies at all.

4

I learned to knit and crochet as a child. I haven’t done any for 30+ year and just picked it back up in 2004. Does that count?

5

I read the comics page of the daily paper as a child. On the same page was the crossword puzzle. I tried to do the crossword from time to time, and never did well. My Dad, seeing my interest in the puzzles, bought me a book of easy crosswords. I did the book–and another, and another. I was hooked, and I’ve done crosswords ever since.

6

I have collected model horses since I was 5 years old. 46 years and counting.

I have always loved writing, and have done it regularly since gradeschool.

7

There’s a picture of me as a kid showing my friends what wild plants one can safely eat, and how to distinguish them by smell. Plants and being a nature guide I have done all my life, in some form or another.

My husband’s uncle, like many men, loved model trains in his youth, and, like many men, has a full set in his den and even a track in the garden.

8

Does looking at porn count?

9

I still create characters. I used to draw them with a pencil (and still do sometimes) but now I do it using 3D graphics.

10

Was it pink? I remember having a 126 plastic camera for a few years back in the 60s…my dad replaced it with his old Argus when I dropped it and it shattered. He replaced it in high school with one of his old Leicas IIIfs when I took photography in my sophomore year =)

I don’t really take pictures of anything important, I am usually too busy touristing. mrAru takes pretty much all the vacation pictures. his dad is a professional photographer. On an odd sort of note, the father of one of my best friends in the last couple years of high school was head of photo illustration for Kodak. He arranged for us to get some really odd films, infrared and kodalith were the most memorable =)

If there is any hobby that has remained a constant in my life it is probably cooking. I have always loved feeding people and experimenting with creating new recipes. I have a few that I would love to enter in food festival contests, I have a great one for artichokes I would love to enter at the artichoke festival if we ever manage to get there.

11

It would be reading for me. It has been my main hobby since the age of 6 or 7.

12

Video games. From Super Mario Brothers (I was late to the party) to the 2011 Steam Summer Sale without pausing.

13

Reading for me - comic books 2000AD mainly - remember getting Starlord comic No1 way back before it was taken over by 2000AD - which i read and still do - 46 this year and still read 2000AD. was allway more of a Strontium Dogs guy rather than a Judge Dredd guy but that may have been to do with Durham Red V’s Cassy Anderson (Judge Cassandra Anderson PSI devision)…

14

Fixing/fiddling with electronics. Back then mostly radios and TVs and mostly computers nowadays but I still do quite a bit of old-school stuff.

Get something for a couple bucks at a garage sale or thrift store, get it running again. Lot’s of fun.

I go all Dr. Frankenstein when I bring something dead back to life. “It’s alive I tell you, alive!”

15

Riding horses. I have taken a few financially induced sabbaticals over the years, but I have always kept a toe in the world so that I wouldn’t be lost when I returned.

16

When I was a young’n, I loved all things electronics. When I was just 8 years old, I would spend hours and hours removing resistors and capacitors from old TVs using a soldering iron, and store the parts in small drawer cabinets. I would also build simple circuits from schematics.

Today I’m an EE. So I still do the same thing, sort of.

17

I used to build cheap, plastic models all the time as a kid. Now I build expensive plastic models once in a while.

I used to ride a new, fancy motorcycle all the time as a kid. Now I ride an old, beat-up relic once in a while.

I used to ski moguls like a madman as a kid. I still do.

18

I started playing Magic: The Gathering in 1994, when I was 13. I still play it today.

19

Reading.

Guitar.

Puttering with stuff I have no business messing with - taking apart things to see how they work back then has translated to things like putting together a solidbody guitar with limited handyman competence now…

Nothing changes…

20

That old Argus C3 brick was my first 35mm camera. It belonged to my mother and the wheels used for settings were so stiff they barely turned. Still, it took better photos than my Brownie Hawkeye. I’ve loved photography since I was a child, but like you never pursued it as a living. I also collected coins as a kid, and took it up again more seriously as an adult. I recently sold most of my collection, though, as it was becoming more of a liability than an asset.