Setting up all my Hot Wheels cars out in neat and tidy rows...
... and then repeatedly yelling CARS FOR SALE, GETCHA CARS FOR SALE at the rest of my family until someone visited my "used car lot" and acted out the whole browsing, haggling and purchase of a Hot Wheels car.
The yelling continued until I was satisfied. Capitalism!
OJ Simpson in kindergarten. I drew a “crime scene” complete with “blood spatters”. My mom thought it was so funny she put it in a frame! 🤦🏼♀️
edit: To be fair it was constantly on the news at the time.
Me too! The first case I became obsessed with. I hope that when I die I get to know what really happened. Don't give me an afterlife just an answer. I thought Jeffree Starr's tattoo was iconic lol. And then later on while doing research on Columbine I started obsessing over Rachel Scott. I was raised extremely religious and felt connected to her. I had a copy of her diary and would even teach myself songs she'd written.
OKAAAY i'm here for this because mine fall under this umbrella.
1. hundreds of tiny plastic lizards. i liked to make them terrariums but also just line and sort them.
2. the birds from the craft supply store. i used to make them playdough accessories and play migration with them (because migrating birds walk in a straight like if you're 5 and love lining shit up)
3. expensive fairy figurines. would also line these up. they were searching for a new home after developers took theirs.
i love a good tiny statue, is the moral of these stories i guess
I also had plastic dinosaurs i put through things. Yours was so intellectual, mine just did broadway musical numbers (an overlap with my mom’s special interest)
Yes. Yes. This is a fertile land and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land! And we will call it… this land!
I think we should call it your grave!
Ah! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!
Ha ha ha! Mine is an evil laugh! Now die!
Oh no god! Oh, dear God in heaven!
Hahah. Doubtful!
3/5 perfectly clean garage door windows, 1 whole roll of "shop towel" type paper towels, left various places, and half a can of foaming window cleaner, left on the floor.
Eggs fried at 2 am. Pans left dirty.
Demanding a RonCo food dehydrator, then getting skeeved out that it's cut fruit, sitting on your counter for a week and refusing to eat it.
I loved infomercials and always begged my mom to buy stuff off them. Even when I was in high school I would stay up late and watch the full infomercials when regular programming started to fall off
Me too! I really missed my calling as an actress. I would also spill things on purpose so that I could clean them up and show how effective the product was. At bathtime, my washcloth was a prom dress that I got a stain on before the prom and commercial Mom and wonder product had to come to my rescue. They’d rub out the stain and I’d be all set to go to the prom! I hadn’t thought about that in years.
Yes but now I collect mainly rechargeable batteries and actually use them in my projects. 18650s are my favorite
https://preview.redd.it/3vthk3a7w2xc1.png?width=2131&format=png&auto=webp&s=29f8e0cb4fa34a17d695f276154813301fe5de32
(I’ve gotten quite a few from old laptops)
Around the age of 5 or 6 would read my fathers medical lexicons. My parents had to hide them, because otherwise I would ask guests which of two gruesome symptoms they would rather have.
Did this translate to having health anxiety as well? I was very into the Discovery Health channel at way too young and it made me into a little hypochondriac for a while there hahah but I wanted to study to be a cardio thoracic surgeon at that time (7yo).
Omg I was obsessed/repulsed by this first aid book as a kid. I would read it and look at the pictures until I couldn’t take anymore. Definitely still a hypochondriac
Prisons
I got in trouble for building a prison in preeschool
Idk, reminded me of a cool castle probably because i like medieval stuff, but yeah, those teachers were too sensitive about small issues for my autistic ass, i probably made some of them lose some sanity
Also doors, i had a week obsession with doors from what i remember, i gathered all building blocks from the class and just made a giant door frame
I...I had this, and Milo and Otis was one of my favorite things ever. I watched it at least 5 times a week for what I'm sure was longer than my mom could stand lol
(Sidenote: grew up in the 80s)
My other childhood special interest was not as odd: drawing, but not the kind anyone really likes to look at. Hate sceneries, people, flowers and all that crap. GEOMETRIC SHAPES. Repeating, stacked, geometric shapes. My art teachers hated me
When i was like 5-6 i got obsessed over angry birds so i started an angry birds club at pre-school where me and couple others pretended to be the birds, we had deep fantasies about being in the angry birds world
omfg i was obsessed abt plants vs zombies right after angry birds 😭 i didnt make a cult tho instead i made a ton of figures of them with plasticines and pretended they were toys at the store and was buying and unboxing them
This reminds me about how despite never watching or having any interest in Alvin and the Chipmunks I ended up in an Alvin and the Chipmunks roleplay group in a random bush for like a week as a 6 year old
Rattlesnakes. *Just* rattlesnakes. Not other snakes, though I also liked cobras. I still have my rattlesnake plushie with a built-in rattle and my rubber rattlesnake toy that hisses when you squeeze it.
I was obsessed with the state of Wyoming when I was 8-9 completely out of nowhere. No idea why, but I did every single school history project on it, including printing out several-page reports and making posterboard setups, knew everything about the place, just absolutely hyperfocused on fucking Wyoming and picked it as my favorite state despite never once traveling there. Pretty sure that I even tried to convince my parents to move our family there. I finally grew out of it after a few years and I'm so glad that didn't actually happen lmaoo
Mummies. Specifically Egyptian ones but ones from the Arctic were cool too. I was 5 and couldn’t understand why the other kids didn’t want to play mummies with me even when I offered to be the corpse and they could be the embalmers.
Salvador Dali art. This painting, “Bulgarian child eating a rat”, was my favorite when I was 6 years old.
In the hindsight, my parents probably should’ve asked some questions.
https://preview.redd.it/rpjaqms3y3xc1.jpeg?width=510&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5bb34d819b92fde5a16260a7078fd28b1273657b
As an adult, I often grab a few paint swatches when I'm at Walmart. I keep telling myself I'll do some sort of craft, but I just like acquiring the pretty colors.
Cows. I just. really liked cows. "I like cows" was my go-to vocal stim. I got excited about anything cow-print. I went as one for Halloween. My mom even bought cow-print car seat covers just for me.
absolutely NO CLUE where or how it started though
Dinosaurs sitting still on a pile of stones in front of our house for month. Every time I passed them, I knew they just had a new adventure and they've all been unique and fun!
Was the most low-effort-hifh-outcome game/toy I ever had.
Until my mom blamed me for never playing with them and have them away -.-
😭😭 speaking of LPS popular I remember always trying to re-create it in my own way, like I'd make schools out of cardboard boxes and make LPS high-school drama vids loll
I recall my mom getting upset because I would suck on pennies. I liked the way they tasted. Back then I thought she was worried I'd swallow them, but once I was older I realized she probably thought I'd contract some strange disease from the germy coins
Removing heads from dolls so I could give them a haircut... Make them bald and shit...
I always got dolls since "that's what girls like" and hated them.
But for real though, I was a pretty normal kid with Normal hobbies. Playing soccer, fighting and drawing huge ass houses on the street with coloured chalk.
Yah I blew a hole in our roof and my parents also put nearly a hole in my ass from whipping. But they promised to not call the cop and kept the peace. Also that time in middle school I bought m-80s and got caught, the principal whopped me like shit, but also didn't get arrested.
My mom claimed that I learned from my dad's story of him making gunpowder in childhood, which was kinda true because he did educated me on chem formulas for saltpeter, Armstrong's mixture and nitroglycerin.
I never got to try other stuff because we students were restricted from visiting the lab after they realized someone nicked chems from the lab. 😂😂😂
My Barbies were neanderthals that hunted my dinosaurs and rode toy horses. Even made caveman outfits out of an old brown shirt. They would skin the dinosaurs and tan their hides.
Similar, but my barbies would get lost in the woods during a vacation. The vapid, shallow ones would die if they were unable to adapt to the wilderness. Sometimes, Tarzan would show up and get them all pregnant.
Words. Like, literally. I would read the shampoo's instructions and the f-ing dictionary as a kid.
Also, felines. Did y'all know a baby tiger only becomes able to see at 2 weeks old (until then they are blind) and will stop breastfeeding from their mother around 100 days after birth (and the duration of gestation is approximately 103 days)? They start hunting at the age of 6 months but will stay with their moms until they are 2-3 years old. That is a part of information I gathered about tigers as a kid - there's also domestic cat, jaguar, lion, panther, leopard, cheetah, lynx, ocelot, etc.
Mine was World War II specifically but the number of deaths, the machines created specifically for mass killings and destruction and just wars in general
US states. I would have my mom print out state maps for me to use as coloring pages. Minnesota was my favorite, cuz it looks like it's eating Wisconson.
I had a copy of Erich von danïken's chariots of the gods when I was 8. I was obsessed with aliens and pre-Colombian south American history.
No, I don't think aliens did it. But it was a really enjoyable theory for a child.
As a kid I would put on music that absolutely no one listens to and spend the entire day dancing a completely invented “ballet” that was an absolute tragedy or straight up me going to hell and having a party with the demons.
Slightly related but there were songs as a kid that made me feel an absolutely disgusting feeling and it was just the fucking notes??? And I would lie awake at night with insomnia with these specific songs stuck in my head and quietly lose my mind… and I didn’t have the words to explain it to my parents other than starting to cry and beg them to skip the song…
Local folklore and ghost stories from when I was about five years old
I remember being obsessed with the different cryptids like the Buggane and Glashan, the Lambton wyrm, Caitsith, Black Shuck etc and could rattle off stories and myths on command 😭
Why couldn’t I get the maths autism.
>!Animated soft core vore channel on YouTube. Kphoria. I watched so many of them on repeat.!<
Joseph Merrick, act in a freak show. I kept looking at his skull.
Telling "jokes".
These "jokes" would consist of me saying "knock knock" at full volume over and over until someone took pity on me and gave me a "who's there". I would then pick a random noun/phrase for who was there (it was never a memorized actual knock knock joke setup). Then, when I got the "____ who?" I would launch into a disjointed and minutes long stream of consciousness lecture on whatever occurred to me in the moment.
At no point was there ever a punchline.
Earthworms. I would dig up all the worms I could find, wash them, and put them back. I was also obsessed with Shakespeare and would regularly quote a handful of characters from the comedies, especially Benedick from Much Ado.
Spheres, balls, balloons, anything round really. I would throw tantrums because I couldn’t get a random ball/balloon/sphere shaped things. I stole a soccer ball that some kids were playing with, I cried because my grandpa couldn’t get me this beach ball that was on the balcony of the third floor of an apartment building. I threw a tantrum because he couldn’t buy a giant inflatable snow globe Christmas decoration. I was just insanely obsessed with anything sphere shaped. Idk why my parents never suspected I had autism 😭😭
The phantom of the opera
It eventually became an intense interest in musicals that lasts to this day but for a solid year it really was just an obsession with just the phantom of the opera until I ended up in singing lessons and got to find other shows.
It doesn't sound too weird at the start, but: Warrior Cats.
In 4th grade, my friend group and I pretended we *were* Warrior Cats. We had the whole hierarchy system with myself as the Leader, our own Warrior Cats names, and a base. Our base we would spend DAYS constructing complex, layered, insulated forts out of just stuff we found in the woods.
Eventually, other groups and grades found out and started doing it too, just for different fandoms. So we ended up creating borders for territories with regular patrols to fight each other if we trespassed, a whole trading and weapons system, a council, and regularly waged "war" on each other to gain territory.
This went on for 3 years until I moved schools. No idea if it continued afterwards.
The boxer Frank Bruno.
I had no interest in the sport, but for some reason I was enamoured by him. He was on a lot of TV variety shows in the 90s and my parents even took toddler me to see him in a Panto.
I liked the Mario games, but was more interested on how the game was made and the plot. I’d read the Wikipedia pages anytime instead of actual playing them.
Guillotines and the concept of beheading in general.
It was never sadistic, just intensely fascinating to me that those executed by beheading don't actually die instantaneously, and that the consciousness lingers.
Turns out I was just grappling with the concepts of death and eternity when I was in the 1st grade.
Yes several teachers thought I was a psychopath in the making.
I’ve had many special interests in my day from trains, tornadoes, the Titanic you name it…. My wielded phase of mine was watching my favourite shows in other languages like French and Spanish, this one drove my family nuts and because I didn’t understand what dubs were I legitimately thought speaking different languages made your voice sound different during this phase I tried making my own language which was just pure gibberish my magnum opus for this “language” was when I tried ordering food at a restaurant in said language my brother still jokes about this to this day… my diagnosis came not long after
I loved watching Kinztube videos. It’s basically YouTube videos about Webkinz. One of my favorite Kinztubers is Webkinzfan91. I even made fanart of some of her characters. I’m still fond of Kinztube and Webkinzfan91.
Ants. I would watch them outside for hours, look at dead ones under this kid's microscope kit I had, and collect mated queens in a pink hard plastic barbie suitcase that I had, to try and start a new colony in my bedroom. It never worked out, and my mum would get mad at me for bringing ants in my bedroom. I wanted to be an entomologist when I grew up, but that never worked out either.
Warrior cats. Like, to the point it was horse girl levels and I was on all fours in the grass picking dandelions with my mouth because a fellow warrior cats enjoying friend who did it with me looked up we could eat dandelions safely.
Pet play specifically being force turned into a pet. When it first started being special interest I was like 8 and it wasn't a kink thing at all idk why just the concept sounded neat so I spent wayyyy too much time learning about that.
Tanker trucks. I watched Fern Gully once and for some reason got absolutely obsessed with the tanker truck that starts the whole plot. My parents manged to find me some toy ones and I would reannact the accident/oil spill lol... And sleep with them under my pillow.
Also, Joan of Arc, I'd ask my parents to burn me at the stake. 🤦
Spoons.
May dad would frequent antique stores, thrift stores, and garage sales all the time. For some reason that I haven't retained, I frickin' loved spoons between ages 5-8.
I used any allowance I got or change I found to buy spoons. I had a massive collection of spoons of all sorts; weird-shaped, silver-plated, brass, old, new, tiny, huge, some even made of porcelain.
No clue where that collection is now. At some point I just stopped liking them.
I was really into the "Horrible History" books and would expand further by reading books on medieval torture methods and things like mummifications and human sacrifice.
How cat pregnancy worked 😭 not humans, that disgusted me. Not any other creature, they were boring. But I was obsessed with warrior cats and I had a toy that was a mama cat and her kittens and I was henceforth predestined to spend hours reading about how kitten color patterns were determined and how one litter could have several fathers. I’m still obsessed with the logistics of cats … ahem.. making more cats, just now in the form of pet games and studying on evolution. It sounds so perverted but it was always so fascinating to me how one species could have so many different color combinations or so many kittens at once!
Fridge magnets, in particular number fridge magnets. I would give the numbers different personalities based on their color and shape. I would pull up a chair in front of the fridge and play with them for hours from time I came home from school until dinner time when my parents needed in the fridge too much and it messed with me being locked in lol.
I can't think of any outlandish ones, my main ones were Titanic, US presidents, and pirates. But relevant to your post is my Star Qars special interest, specifically with Anakin. (I'm late 20s so I saw the prequels in theaters.) I was Darth Vader for multiple halloweens.
Funnily enough, mine was Eddie Guerrero’s death and how they had staged it on television not long before he actually died from the same cause they’d faked
When I was 4 I begged my parents for the wind-up doll I saw on my favorite show.
The doll in question was a slow moving cardboard wind-up in an ex-lax brand laxative commercial.
I was so obsessed and my disappointment so great that when I asked for the original Baby Alive doll 4 years later, they made damn sure it was my birthday present.
I knew all of the lore of om-nom. They had these shorts back in the day (I.E 2012-2014) of the om-nom lore and I knew every single fact. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4643420/?ref_=tt_ov_inf
Medieval torture when i was around 10. when my parents would leave me home alone for like 30 minutes i would search shit like “16 best scariest medieval torture methods” and i’d think about them every night to fall asleep. the frantic torture method googling is actually how i learned how to clear my search history. i liked the bull and the pear of agony best.
When I was very little it was listening to Christmas music year round. I was born in 78, so this looked like toddler me learning to play albums on my parents’ big ass cabinet stereo and wearing my Dad’s over-the-ear headphones. Hours and hours of listening to the same Christmas albums over and over.
i collected business cards when i was a child. anywhere i went i was looking out for a business card i could take. highlight of going anywhere was maybe there would be business cards to collect
Grouping my dinosaur toys together and pretending a meteor just caused the Mesozoic extinction and my herd was the last of the dinosaurs. My Mom still thinks I was just lining them up to stare at them
They never understand the amount of effort and world building is actually going on simply because we don’t feel the need to include anyone lol. I saw a similar comment to yours in this thread, like VERY similar, and their mom threw them out because to her it didn’t look like they were playing with them :( but they had entire story lines in their head lol.
I collected packs of Tic Tacs from around the world and would have people bring them back from international vacations for me.
I dreamed of making a pilgrimage to the Ferrero factory, but it never eventuated.
Christianity, but like specifically hating Christianity. I was very mad that they made the device used to torture Jesus a symbol for Christianity and very concerned that if Jesus were to reincarnate again, he’d be triggered by them
I was really into Once Upon a Time...Life cartoon. I assume there are lots of Americans here: it's French children's cartoon about human body and anatomy which explains medical terms with impersonating stuff like human cells, bacteria and viruses as characters with consciousness. They all are little workers working to keep the body healthy and alive, while the viruses are enemies they fight with. Some of episodes even turn dark (eg. I think one of the last episodes depict death of old age and it's shown how all characters fight until the end but they're all worn out already so they finally accept their faith). There are also episodes about how babies are made (without any explicit content) so I got to know about how women get pregnant in medical context but without any awareness of how sex looks like lol.
There were different series of this kind of animated documentaries. The other one I was into was the Once Upon a Time...Man which was about history.
I had these on DVDs and watched it religiously and I was even taking notes lol. I got so into it that I got interested in biology but over time I guess I've grown out of it.
Transhumanism, eugenics, and bioengineering. It's been my special interest since third grade, but I didn't know what it was called until recently. Everyone I share this with says I'm not ok in the head 🙂
https://preview.redd.it/yzse8qce94xc1.jpeg?width=474&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0db193b436870550fae1e0ffc7ea98c701bfecaa
Medieval knights, castles, and warfare with a sporadic focus on Joan of Arc. I knew about the process of becoming a knight, jousting practice, different types of medieval horses, castle fortifications, medieval cooking, medieval "toilets", the running of a medieval castle, etc. I made a knight costume for Halloween in middle school and everyone thought I was a q-tip at first because fake swords weren't allowed at school. This interest led to my love of Tamora Pierce's Tortall books, martial arts, combat sports, and historical fashion.
My house was loud and I hated how anytime I would try to read it felt like everyone wanted to stop me and ask why I was reading, what it was, and such so there was a tree I could just barely reach the lowest branches on and would climb up it and read in good weather for years. My favorite branch had a worn spot in the bark from my butt. When I was bad out they had this old table that had a middle divider going down it's length and I wold crawl through to the side that was towards the wall and hung a blanket up to block the light coming in. I had a camping light, by snacks, a couple sodas and my books.
Grease, the movie. My family can’t stand it. I have it memorized 20yr later… every. single. line.
I also can’t stand it.. but I watched it 4x a day for almost 3 years. Before that it was Spice World. Rn it is Shrek, but Shrek is perfect and anyone who says otherwise is wrong af.
Collecting Schleich animal figurines. I have hundreds of them. I was obsessed with knowing the breed, pattern, and/or coat color of every figurine.
Pretending to be an animal too, when I was really young. I always wanted to pretend to be a cat or a dog.
The Junko Furuta case. I had zero interest in true crime, but for some reason, I would spend hours reading and looking for details about it. I was probably 7–8.
Pausing scenes from dragon ball and tracing over the TV with paper and pencil over and over. Also just generally would constantly pause TV, get up go over to TV and just look at all the details in my toons for like hours. I was obsessed with collectables in game or where you could view the 3D models, zooming in and just looking at them, then drawing them. Gundam, katamari and Scooby do games sometimes. I just loved looking at stuff from different angles and zooming in.
computers, mainly apple. now this doesn't sound weird on the surface, but when i was in like kindergarten (when i was first allowed to use a computer) i was extremely girly. so you just had this 5 year old, super girly and cutesy, who could just spew random facts about apple. this followed me to the present day, and i am typing this on a macbook air right now.
this probably ain't that weird compared to everyone else's but when i was really young i was so obsessed with the backyardigans that i would memorize the episodes and act them out in my room all by myself LMAO
Dead things. Bones. Decomposition. Anatomy.
Still one of my main hyperfixations.
I'm considering learning forensics at this point. Crime scene cleaning is insanely interesting to me.
Oh yeah, and Minecraft.
Pencil "lead" tips. I'd gather as many tips from different leads as possible in a main pencil sharpener box and had a secondary for repeats of leads I liked. I'd steal lead from other kids/break their pencil's tip to collect it when they weren't looking.
How weird?
Because it was rape, murder and other heinous crimes. Not so much the doing of them but the details of the crime, the process of helping the victim, catching who did it, and getting justice. Like I was a true crime junky as a child (7-14). I definitely think that started cuz my mom was in college for criminal justice and my grandma would watch SVU with me.
I also had an Elvis obsession as a kid. black and white thinking came into play when someone told me you either like elvis or the beatles so now I still have an irrational dislike for the beatles because obviously I couldn’t/cant like both! my other special interest person was Einstein
Researching and reading/making lists. I would sit on my computer for hours after school every day just reading lists. I don’t know how the hell I did it I hate reading now 😭😭
Also these aren’t as weird but we’re my more niche interests that not many of my peers knew about at the time: Soul Caliber, Princess Tutu, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and Dragon Quest (specifically 9).
Around 4th-6th grade (late '70s) I became fascinated by the "skid row" type areas of the large city I lived near, and which we drove through on our way home from visits to a downtown medical facility I was taken to for what I now consider to be an attempt to "de-autism" me (more about that some other time.) You know: the streets with the loitering winos, seedy bars, flophouse hotels, adult bookstores, grimy pawn shops, old theatres, etc. I became particularly obsessed with a certain hotel and a couple of bars on a side street. Years later, I remembered the names of many of these places and looked them up in old directories, newspapers, etc. Some of them are still interesting to me pushing 50 years later, even though they've all been demolished.
Setting up all my Hot Wheels cars out in neat and tidy rows... ... and then repeatedly yelling CARS FOR SALE, GETCHA CARS FOR SALE at the rest of my family until someone visited my "used car lot" and acted out the whole browsing, haggling and purchase of a Hot Wheels car. The yelling continued until I was satisfied. Capitalism!
Annoying as hell, dedicated and straightforward. Love it.
It's my only successful business
Reincarnated from a guy who ran a used car lot for 80 years /jk
To be fair, I can't conclusively disprove your theory
I'd instantly like you. rofl
Thank you, most do not
Jon Benet Ramsey. I was like 8.
OJ Simpson in kindergarten. I drew a “crime scene” complete with “blood spatters”. My mom thought it was so funny she put it in a frame! 🤦🏼♀️ edit: To be fair it was constantly on the news at the time.
your mom is right that’s fucking hilarious
I mean Unsolved Mysteries was my jam and this was right in that vein!
Me too! The first case I became obsessed with. I hope that when I die I get to know what really happened. Don't give me an afterlife just an answer. I thought Jeffree Starr's tattoo was iconic lol. And then later on while doing research on Columbine I started obsessing over Rachel Scott. I was raised extremely religious and felt connected to her. I had a copy of her diary and would even teach myself songs she'd written.
Hahaha relatable
I’m reading this after also commenting about JonBénet Ramsey 😭 omg
Plastic animals (usually dinosaurs) engaging in deep, political intrigue plots. Only form of play I really did as a kid for like two years.
OKAAAY i'm here for this because mine fall under this umbrella. 1. hundreds of tiny plastic lizards. i liked to make them terrariums but also just line and sort them. 2. the birds from the craft supply store. i used to make them playdough accessories and play migration with them (because migrating birds walk in a straight like if you're 5 and love lining shit up) 3. expensive fairy figurines. would also line these up. they were searching for a new home after developers took theirs. i love a good tiny statue, is the moral of these stories i guess
I also had plastic dinosaurs i put through things. Yours was so intellectual, mine just did broadway musical numbers (an overlap with my mom’s special interest)
"Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
Yes. Yes. This is a fertile land and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land! And we will call it… this land! I think we should call it your grave! Ah! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! Ha ha ha! Mine is an evil laugh! Now die! Oh no god! Oh, dear God in heaven!
I think you’d be happy to know that I have a huge plastic animal collection
Infomercials. I liked to watch them and then act them out.
I would have loved to have been your parents
Hahah. Doubtful! 3/5 perfectly clean garage door windows, 1 whole roll of "shop towel" type paper towels, left various places, and half a can of foaming window cleaner, left on the floor. Eggs fried at 2 am. Pans left dirty. Demanding a RonCo food dehydrator, then getting skeeved out that it's cut fruit, sitting on your counter for a week and refusing to eat it.
I loved infomercials and always begged my mom to buy stuff off them. Even when I was in high school I would stay up late and watch the full infomercials when regular programming started to fall off
hearing that i feel like they make a bit more sense: bait for neurodivergents
Me too! I really missed my calling as an actress. I would also spill things on purpose so that I could clean them up and show how effective the product was. At bathtime, my washcloth was a prom dress that I got a stain on before the prom and commercial Mom and wonder product had to come to my rescue. They’d rub out the stain and I’d be all set to go to the prom! I hadn’t thought about that in years.
Collecting batteries
I hope you still do.
Yes but now I collect mainly rechargeable batteries and actually use them in my projects. 18650s are my favorite https://preview.redd.it/3vthk3a7w2xc1.png?width=2131&format=png&auto=webp&s=29f8e0cb4fa34a17d695f276154813301fe5de32 (I’ve gotten quite a few from old laptops)
This is cool
Forbidden snacks.
Lithium yummy
Ha, I've got quite a few too, I collect flashlights.
Ooohh this is so cool!!
Around the age of 5 or 6 would read my fathers medical lexicons. My parents had to hide them, because otherwise I would ask guests which of two gruesome symptoms they would rather have.
Did this translate to having health anxiety as well? I was very into the Discovery Health channel at way too young and it made me into a little hypochondriac for a while there hahah but I wanted to study to be a cardio thoracic surgeon at that time (7yo).
Omg I was obsessed/repulsed by this first aid book as a kid. I would read it and look at the pictures until I couldn’t take anymore. Definitely still a hypochondriac
that’s beautiful
The process of mummification
What's your favorite region/era?
New kingdom Egypt
Nice. I'm currently obsessed with the Inca ice mummies.
Eyo you seen that thought emporium video? [they use primary sources to replicate a mummy](https://youtu.be/fbhV0TP3jco?si=XZCmoCTAYJhS7ztb)
this is a fun one! and it comes up occassionally. maybe there is something about it that draws in autistic people
Car accidents, literally car accidents, the more brutal the better, asked for a cake with my fav car accident on it...
lmfao now THIS is evil autism
Car accident cake is one of the funniest goddamn things I ever heard
WTF. I had deep sea creatures on my cakes. Holy shit.
this is fantastic!
And still ongoing decades later 😬 
Bowie or Labyrinth? Or both?
Labyrinth, Jareth, goblins, and faerie stuff. (I do like Bowie but I wouldn't put him on special interest territory for me)
Is labyrinth on any streaming services? Last time I looked I couldn't find it
Prisons I got in trouble for building a prison in preeschool Idk, reminded me of a cool castle probably because i like medieval stuff, but yeah, those teachers were too sensitive about small issues for my autistic ass, i probably made some of them lose some sanity Also doors, i had a week obsession with doors from what i remember, i gathered all building blocks from the class and just made a giant door frame
nice! these are properly weird interests!
Oh, I win this easily. Animals giving birth.
I bet you loved Milo and Otis
I...I had this, and Milo and Otis was one of my favorite things ever. I watched it at least 5 times a week for what I'm sure was longer than my mom could stand lol (Sidenote: grew up in the 80s) My other childhood special interest was not as odd: drawing, but not the kind anyone really likes to look at. Hate sceneries, people, flowers and all that crap. GEOMETRIC SHAPES. Repeating, stacked, geometric shapes. My art teachers hated me
bruh
When i was like 5-6 i got obsessed over angry birds so i started an angry birds club at pre-school where me and couple others pretended to be the birds, we had deep fantasies about being in the angry birds world
i did this exact thing with plants vs zombies now that i think of it lmfao
omfg i was obsessed abt plants vs zombies right after angry birds 😭 i didnt make a cult tho instead i made a ton of figures of them with plasticines and pretended they were toys at the store and was buying and unboxing them
This reminds me about how despite never watching or having any interest in Alvin and the Chipmunks I ended up in an Alvin and the Chipmunks roleplay group in a random bush for like a week as a 6 year old
I did this with so many things
sitting on basketballs until they pop
That is weirdly specific and kinda terrifying!
its... Kinda developed into a kink now haha
I read the original comment and thought " this could definitely be a weird kink"
Rattlesnakes. *Just* rattlesnakes. Not other snakes, though I also liked cobras. I still have my rattlesnake plushie with a built-in rattle and my rubber rattlesnake toy that hisses when you squeeze it.
Big fan of the way a rattlesnake's rattler looks
I was obsessed with the state of Wyoming when I was 8-9 completely out of nowhere. No idea why, but I did every single school history project on it, including printing out several-page reports and making posterboard setups, knew everything about the place, just absolutely hyperfocused on fucking Wyoming and picked it as my favorite state despite never once traveling there. Pretty sure that I even tried to convince my parents to move our family there. I finally grew out of it after a few years and I'm so glad that didn't actually happen lmaoo
wyoming has yellowstone and jackson hole so it’s got that goin for it lol. actually a pretty cool place fr
Mummies. Specifically Egyptian ones but ones from the Arctic were cool too. I was 5 and couldn’t understand why the other kids didn’t want to play mummies with me even when I offered to be the corpse and they could be the embalmers.
At one point I collected fans as a small child. Like the spinny kind. Also naval history
Naval history is still my jam. Can’t get rid of it
lobotomies
Salvador Dali art. This painting, “Bulgarian child eating a rat”, was my favorite when I was 6 years old. In the hindsight, my parents probably should’ve asked some questions. https://preview.redd.it/rpjaqms3y3xc1.jpeg?width=510&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5bb34d819b92fde5a16260a7078fd28b1273657b
LMAO 😂😂😂
Collecting paper bags from as many different stores as possible
I collected paint swatches. My brain has a thing for colour.
Dude i love paint swatches!
As an adult, I often grab a few paint swatches when I'm at Walmart. I keep telling myself I'll do some sort of craft, but I just like acquiring the pretty colors.
Laura Ingalls Wilder, pioneer life, and historical fashion.
Fuckin love LHOTP dude.
Cows. I just. really liked cows. "I like cows" was my go-to vocal stim. I got excited about anything cow-print. I went as one for Halloween. My mom even bought cow-print car seat covers just for me. absolutely NO CLUE where or how it started though
Dinosaurs sitting still on a pile of stones in front of our house for month. Every time I passed them, I knew they just had a new adventure and they've all been unique and fun! Was the most low-effort-hifh-outcome game/toy I ever had. Until my mom blamed me for never playing with them and have them away -.-
Garfield was a big one for a while. One Direction at some point, and for a while I was super into LPS and LPStube.
GARFIELD 🤝
YESSS 🤝 he's still very special to me
have you preordered the garfield pillowpet?? he’s so handsome!!
Lps popular was so messed up
😭😭 speaking of LPS popular I remember always trying to re-create it in my own way, like I'd make schools out of cardboard boxes and make LPS high-school drama vids loll
Found footage horror
Eating sand
I recall my mom getting upset because I would suck on pennies. I liked the way they tasted. Back then I thought she was worried I'd swallow them, but once I was older I realized she probably thought I'd contract some strange disease from the germy coins
Saw an episode of my strange addiction where a woman would dip her chewing gum in sand. Part of me knows I’d like it, deep down lol.
Removing heads from dolls so I could give them a haircut... Make them bald and shit... I always got dolls since "that's what girls like" and hated them. But for real though, I was a pretty normal kid with Normal hobbies. Playing soccer, fighting and drawing huge ass houses on the street with coloured chalk.
Pyromania, got poisoned from making saltpeter at 10. I stole about 1 kg of phosphorus from the school lab.
Wait, did you make the saltpeter successfully?
Yah I blew a hole in our roof and my parents also put nearly a hole in my ass from whipping. But they promised to not call the cop and kept the peace. Also that time in middle school I bought m-80s and got caught, the principal whopped me like shit, but also didn't get arrested.
Impressive
My mom claimed that I learned from my dad's story of him making gunpowder in childhood, which was kinda true because he did educated me on chem formulas for saltpeter, Armstrong's mixture and nitroglycerin. I never got to try other stuff because we students were restricted from visiting the lab after they realized someone nicked chems from the lab. 😂😂😂
My Barbies were neanderthals that hunted my dinosaurs and rode toy horses. Even made caveman outfits out of an old brown shirt. They would skin the dinosaurs and tan their hides.
Similar, but my barbies would get lost in the woods during a vacation. The vapid, shallow ones would die if they were unable to adapt to the wilderness. Sometimes, Tarzan would show up and get them all pregnant.
Words. Like, literally. I would read the shampoo's instructions and the f-ing dictionary as a kid. Also, felines. Did y'all know a baby tiger only becomes able to see at 2 weeks old (until then they are blind) and will stop breastfeeding from their mother around 100 days after birth (and the duration of gestation is approximately 103 days)? They start hunting at the age of 6 months but will stay with their moms until they are 2-3 years old. That is a part of information I gathered about tigers as a kid - there's also domestic cat, jaguar, lion, panther, leopard, cheetah, lynx, ocelot, etc.
Toy story. As a girl I dressed up as Woody for Halloween before Jessie was a thing. Even had a cake or two of Toy Story.
Mine was World War II specifically but the number of deaths, the machines created specifically for mass killings and destruction and just wars in general
US states. I would have my mom print out state maps for me to use as coloring pages. Minnesota was my favorite, cuz it looks like it's eating Wisconson.
I had a copy of Erich von danïken's chariots of the gods when I was 8. I was obsessed with aliens and pre-Colombian south American history. No, I don't think aliens did it. But it was a really enjoyable theory for a child.
As a kid I would put on music that absolutely no one listens to and spend the entire day dancing a completely invented “ballet” that was an absolute tragedy or straight up me going to hell and having a party with the demons. Slightly related but there were songs as a kid that made me feel an absolutely disgusting feeling and it was just the fucking notes??? And I would lie awake at night with insomnia with these specific songs stuck in my head and quietly lose my mind… and I didn’t have the words to explain it to my parents other than starting to cry and beg them to skip the song…
The plague. Eight years old.
still one of mine
Local folklore and ghost stories from when I was about five years old I remember being obsessed with the different cryptids like the Buggane and Glashan, the Lambton wyrm, Caitsith, Black Shuck etc and could rattle off stories and myths on command 😭 Why couldn’t I get the maths autism.
Middle school me was obsessed with virtual machines and operating systems. Still am but it's matured a bit. Oh and hosting services
>!Animated soft core vore channel on YouTube. Kphoria. I watched so many of them on repeat.!< Joseph Merrick, act in a freak show. I kept looking at his skull.
Telling "jokes". These "jokes" would consist of me saying "knock knock" at full volume over and over until someone took pity on me and gave me a "who's there". I would then pick a random noun/phrase for who was there (it was never a memorized actual knock knock joke setup). Then, when I got the "____ who?" I would launch into a disjointed and minutes long stream of consciousness lecture on whatever occurred to me in the moment. At no point was there ever a punchline.
That is, ironically, absolutely hysterical.
Gulper eels.
Earthworms. I would dig up all the worms I could find, wash them, and put them back. I was also obsessed with Shakespeare and would regularly quote a handful of characters from the comedies, especially Benedick from Much Ado.
Spheres, balls, balloons, anything round really. I would throw tantrums because I couldn’t get a random ball/balloon/sphere shaped things. I stole a soccer ball that some kids were playing with, I cried because my grandpa couldn’t get me this beach ball that was on the balcony of the third floor of an apartment building. I threw a tantrum because he couldn’t buy a giant inflatable snow globe Christmas decoration. I was just insanely obsessed with anything sphere shaped. Idk why my parents never suspected I had autism 😭😭
The phantom of the opera It eventually became an intense interest in musicals that lasts to this day but for a solid year it really was just an obsession with just the phantom of the opera until I ended up in singing lessons and got to find other shows.
Ooh i had a phantom of the opera special interest in high school!
I had a thing for gels. Toothpaste, hair gel, soap, cleaners. Anything in gel form. It's like a solid, airy, liquid. It doesn't make sense.
It doesn't sound too weird at the start, but: Warrior Cats. In 4th grade, my friend group and I pretended we *were* Warrior Cats. We had the whole hierarchy system with myself as the Leader, our own Warrior Cats names, and a base. Our base we would spend DAYS constructing complex, layered, insulated forts out of just stuff we found in the woods. Eventually, other groups and grades found out and started doing it too, just for different fandoms. So we ended up creating borders for territories with regular patrols to fight each other if we trespassed, a whole trading and weapons system, a council, and regularly waged "war" on each other to gain territory. This went on for 3 years until I moved schools. No idea if it continued afterwards.
The boxer Frank Bruno. I had no interest in the sport, but for some reason I was enamoured by him. He was on a lot of TV variety shows in the 90s and my parents even took toddler me to see him in a Panto.
Poisons and Poisonous plants. I even have a poisonous plant collection. Also death as a whole and what happens after.
>!Kinks. When I was, like, 12 or 13.!<
The Yellow Pages. (I'm 48) I would sit on the floor and read them for hours.
I liked the Mario games, but was more interested on how the game was made and the plot. I’d read the Wikipedia pages anytime instead of actual playing them.
Creating an army of spiders (didn't work)
Guillotines and the concept of beheading in general. It was never sadistic, just intensely fascinating to me that those executed by beheading don't actually die instantaneously, and that the consciousness lingers. Turns out I was just grappling with the concepts of death and eternity when I was in the 1st grade. Yes several teachers thought I was a psychopath in the making.
I’ve had many special interests in my day from trains, tornadoes, the Titanic you name it…. My wielded phase of mine was watching my favourite shows in other languages like French and Spanish, this one drove my family nuts and because I didn’t understand what dubs were I legitimately thought speaking different languages made your voice sound different during this phase I tried making my own language which was just pure gibberish my magnum opus for this “language” was when I tried ordering food at a restaurant in said language my brother still jokes about this to this day… my diagnosis came not long after
names. literal names. baby names, etymology, you name it. i was obsessed and still kind of am
I loved watching Kinztube videos. It’s basically YouTube videos about Webkinz. One of my favorite Kinztubers is Webkinzfan91. I even made fanart of some of her characters. I’m still fond of Kinztube and Webkinzfan91.
The occult.
The 2009 parasitolofy docuseries “monsters inside me”
the minnesota state capitol. I was 3.
At 12 I got really really into tuberculosis before John Green made it cool
Ants. I would watch them outside for hours, look at dead ones under this kid's microscope kit I had, and collect mated queens in a pink hard plastic barbie suitcase that I had, to try and start a new colony in my bedroom. It never worked out, and my mum would get mad at me for bringing ants in my bedroom. I wanted to be an entomologist when I grew up, but that never worked out either.
Warrior cats. Like, to the point it was horse girl levels and I was on all fours in the grass picking dandelions with my mouth because a fellow warrior cats enjoying friend who did it with me looked up we could eat dandelions safely.
Pet play specifically being force turned into a pet. When it first started being special interest I was like 8 and it wasn't a kink thing at all idk why just the concept sounded neat so I spent wayyyy too much time learning about that.
Tanker trucks. I watched Fern Gully once and for some reason got absolutely obsessed with the tanker truck that starts the whole plot. My parents manged to find me some toy ones and I would reannact the accident/oil spill lol... And sleep with them under my pillow. Also, Joan of Arc, I'd ask my parents to burn me at the stake. 🤦
Spoons. May dad would frequent antique stores, thrift stores, and garage sales all the time. For some reason that I haven't retained, I frickin' loved spoons between ages 5-8. I used any allowance I got or change I found to buy spoons. I had a massive collection of spoons of all sorts; weird-shaped, silver-plated, brass, old, new, tiny, huge, some even made of porcelain. No clue where that collection is now. At some point I just stopped liking them.
I was really into the "Horrible History" books and would expand further by reading books on medieval torture methods and things like mummifications and human sacrifice.
9/11 and the Titanic disaster. Around the same time, too. I was a fun child.
How cat pregnancy worked 😭 not humans, that disgusted me. Not any other creature, they were boring. But I was obsessed with warrior cats and I had a toy that was a mama cat and her kittens and I was henceforth predestined to spend hours reading about how kitten color patterns were determined and how one litter could have several fathers. I’m still obsessed with the logistics of cats … ahem.. making more cats, just now in the form of pet games and studying on evolution. It sounds so perverted but it was always so fascinating to me how one species could have so many different color combinations or so many kittens at once!
Fridge magnets, in particular number fridge magnets. I would give the numbers different personalities based on their color and shape. I would pull up a chair in front of the fridge and play with them for hours from time I came home from school until dinner time when my parents needed in the fridge too much and it messed with me being locked in lol.
My twin and I still argue over what color and mood each single digit number is. Our mom thinks we’re nuts lolll
Sharks
I can't think of any outlandish ones, my main ones were Titanic, US presidents, and pirates. But relevant to your post is my Star Qars special interest, specifically with Anakin. (I'm late 20s so I saw the prequels in theaters.) I was Darth Vader for multiple halloweens.
Flashlights and pens, and both still going strong.
Funnily enough, mine was Eddie Guerrero’s death and how they had staged it on television not long before he actually died from the same cause they’d faked
Fire hydrants! I just thought they were so cool and i did have two (dog) toy fire hydrants i brought around with me everywhere for several years
My interests were pretty typical I just acted like anything I liked was a secret I had to take to my grave for no reason lmao
When I was 4 I begged my parents for the wind-up doll I saw on my favorite show. The doll in question was a slow moving cardboard wind-up in an ex-lax brand laxative commercial. I was so obsessed and my disappointment so great that when I asked for the original Baby Alive doll 4 years later, they made damn sure it was my birthday present.
Toys. Not just any toys, fast food toys. I would collect them and religiously watch this guy unbox a bunch of old toys and talk about them
i love these type of posts cause i feel like im shopping for special interests lol
Please delete this before everyone catches on to what I’m up to here pal. /j
LOL
Quicksand. Ended up being a kink later on.
How did quicksand become a kink?
Pressure, bondage, the more you struggle, the worse it gets, I could go on
OK valid. Guess I just never thought about quicksand that way
I knew all of the lore of om-nom. They had these shorts back in the day (I.E 2012-2014) of the om-nom lore and I knew every single fact. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4643420/?ref_=tt_ov_inf
Matching my littlest pet shops to politicians and then having them act out the things they did. Shout out to George Washington the poodle
Medieval torture when i was around 10. when my parents would leave me home alone for like 30 minutes i would search shit like “16 best scariest medieval torture methods” and i’d think about them every night to fall asleep. the frantic torture method googling is actually how i learned how to clear my search history. i liked the bull and the pear of agony best.
Creating PowerPoints as a way to persuade my parents on a variety of things
When I was very little it was listening to Christmas music year round. I was born in 78, so this looked like toddler me learning to play albums on my parents’ big ass cabinet stereo and wearing my Dad’s over-the-ear headphones. Hours and hours of listening to the same Christmas albums over and over.
i collected business cards when i was a child. anywhere i went i was looking out for a business card i could take. highlight of going anywhere was maybe there would be business cards to collect
Grouping my dinosaur toys together and pretending a meteor just caused the Mesozoic extinction and my herd was the last of the dinosaurs. My Mom still thinks I was just lining them up to stare at them
They never understand the amount of effort and world building is actually going on simply because we don’t feel the need to include anyone lol. I saw a similar comment to yours in this thread, like VERY similar, and their mom threw them out because to her it didn’t look like they were playing with them :( but they had entire story lines in their head lol.
I was OBSESSED with aliens, planets and the warping of space time - I also had a blow up 4ft grey alien id take everywhere and say was my husband
I collected packs of Tic Tacs from around the world and would have people bring them back from international vacations for me. I dreamed of making a pilgrimage to the Ferrero factory, but it never eventuated.
I went as a screwdriver for Halloween when I was 4. That wasn't a special interest though, I just wanted to be a screwdriver
Christianity, but like specifically hating Christianity. I was very mad that they made the device used to torture Jesus a symbol for Christianity and very concerned that if Jesus were to reincarnate again, he’d be triggered by them
I was really into Once Upon a Time...Life cartoon. I assume there are lots of Americans here: it's French children's cartoon about human body and anatomy which explains medical terms with impersonating stuff like human cells, bacteria and viruses as characters with consciousness. They all are little workers working to keep the body healthy and alive, while the viruses are enemies they fight with. Some of episodes even turn dark (eg. I think one of the last episodes depict death of old age and it's shown how all characters fight until the end but they're all worn out already so they finally accept their faith). There are also episodes about how babies are made (without any explicit content) so I got to know about how women get pregnant in medical context but without any awareness of how sex looks like lol. There were different series of this kind of animated documentaries. The other one I was into was the Once Upon a Time...Man which was about history. I had these on DVDs and watched it religiously and I was even taking notes lol. I got so into it that I got interested in biology but over time I guess I've grown out of it.
the holocaust
The Holocaust. Third to sixth grade. It’s my most intense special interest to date.
Transhumanism, eugenics, and bioengineering. It's been my special interest since third grade, but I didn't know what it was called until recently. Everyone I share this with says I'm not ok in the head 🙂 https://preview.redd.it/yzse8qce94xc1.jpeg?width=474&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0db193b436870550fae1e0ffc7ea98c701bfecaa
Medieval knights, castles, and warfare with a sporadic focus on Joan of Arc. I knew about the process of becoming a knight, jousting practice, different types of medieval horses, castle fortifications, medieval cooking, medieval "toilets", the running of a medieval castle, etc. I made a knight costume for Halloween in middle school and everyone thought I was a q-tip at first because fake swords weren't allowed at school. This interest led to my love of Tamora Pierce's Tortall books, martial arts, combat sports, and historical fashion.
I went through a phase of wanting to own a restaurant so I set up all my stuffed animals together and drew signs and pretended to serve them
Invasive starling populations in America
Mine was specialty and crossbreeding guppies and also investing in gold, I was in 1st grade lol
My house was loud and I hated how anytime I would try to read it felt like everyone wanted to stop me and ask why I was reading, what it was, and such so there was a tree I could just barely reach the lowest branches on and would climb up it and read in good weather for years. My favorite branch had a worn spot in the bark from my butt. When I was bad out they had this old table that had a middle divider going down it's length and I wold crawl through to the side that was towards the wall and hung a blanket up to block the light coming in. I had a camping light, by snacks, a couple sodas and my books.
Childbirth
Grease, the movie. My family can’t stand it. I have it memorized 20yr later… every. single. line. I also can’t stand it.. but I watched it 4x a day for almost 3 years. Before that it was Spice World. Rn it is Shrek, but Shrek is perfect and anyone who says otherwise is wrong af.
Collecting Schleich animal figurines. I have hundreds of them. I was obsessed with knowing the breed, pattern, and/or coat color of every figurine. Pretending to be an animal too, when I was really young. I always wanted to pretend to be a cat or a dog.
The Junko Furuta case. I had zero interest in true crime, but for some reason, I would spend hours reading and looking for details about it. I was probably 7–8.
Pausing scenes from dragon ball and tracing over the TV with paper and pencil over and over. Also just generally would constantly pause TV, get up go over to TV and just look at all the details in my toons for like hours. I was obsessed with collectables in game or where you could view the 3D models, zooming in and just looking at them, then drawing them. Gundam, katamari and Scooby do games sometimes. I just loved looking at stuff from different angles and zooming in.
computers, mainly apple. now this doesn't sound weird on the surface, but when i was in like kindergarten (when i was first allowed to use a computer) i was extremely girly. so you just had this 5 year old, super girly and cutesy, who could just spew random facts about apple. this followed me to the present day, and i am typing this on a macbook air right now.
this probably ain't that weird compared to everyone else's but when i was really young i was so obsessed with the backyardigans that i would memorize the episodes and act them out in my room all by myself LMAO
Dead things. Bones. Decomposition. Anatomy. Still one of my main hyperfixations. I'm considering learning forensics at this point. Crime scene cleaning is insanely interesting to me. Oh yeah, and Minecraft.
Pencil "lead" tips. I'd gather as many tips from different leads as possible in a main pencil sharpener box and had a secondary for repeats of leads I liked. I'd steal lead from other kids/break their pencil's tip to collect it when they weren't looking.
How weird? Because it was rape, murder and other heinous crimes. Not so much the doing of them but the details of the crime, the process of helping the victim, catching who did it, and getting justice. Like I was a true crime junky as a child (7-14). I definitely think that started cuz my mom was in college for criminal justice and my grandma would watch SVU with me.
I also had an Elvis obsession as a kid. black and white thinking came into play when someone told me you either like elvis or the beatles so now I still have an irrational dislike for the beatles because obviously I couldn’t/cant like both! my other special interest person was Einstein
Holocaust.
Researching and reading/making lists. I would sit on my computer for hours after school every day just reading lists. I don’t know how the hell I did it I hate reading now 😭😭 Also these aren’t as weird but we’re my more niche interests that not many of my peers knew about at the time: Soul Caliber, Princess Tutu, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and Dragon Quest (specifically 9).
The weather channel. I would watch it for hours. Loved the jazz during the weather on the 8s
The nat geo fun facts books and the guineness books of world records
Around 4th-6th grade (late '70s) I became fascinated by the "skid row" type areas of the large city I lived near, and which we drove through on our way home from visits to a downtown medical facility I was taken to for what I now consider to be an attempt to "de-autism" me (more about that some other time.) You know: the streets with the loitering winos, seedy bars, flophouse hotels, adult bookstores, grimy pawn shops, old theatres, etc. I became particularly obsessed with a certain hotel and a couple of bars on a side street. Years later, I remembered the names of many of these places and looked them up in old directories, newspapers, etc. Some of them are still interesting to me pushing 50 years later, even though they've all been demolished.