My interests and obsesssions - unusual for Asperger's even?

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I find it difficult to understand why north is on the top on the map. If you think about it, it makes no sense. At least on the northern hemisphere, but this is where map making was developed. I think that the commonly used orientation was a result of a pure chance that can be labeled as a mistake.

Why do I think so? When you look at the shaded relief map (of an area in the northern hemisphere), did you notice that mountains are shaded unrealistically? They have their north (actually north-west) slopes illuminated, and south slopes dark. This is contrary to what is seen in nature, as north slopes will never be in sunlight (not really true south of tropic of Capricorn, but even this area gets light from south for the most of the year). However, such shading is necessary, because human brain recreates 3D image from 2D shading by assuming that light comes from the top. But top on the map is north! This is the reason why maps would be more realistic if they were "south up". Note that southern hemisphere maps are realistic (because sunlight there comes from the north). However, southern hemisphere contains much less land and most of Earth population lives north from equator. Why then maps of majority of land are upside down? One of the early cartographers must have made an error.

I've had a life-long obsession with literature and books. Generally, though, my most focused obsessions are short-term (from several months up to a year at a time).
Some of them throughout my life have been (not in chronological order!):
Designing home floor plans on graph paper,
Star Trek,
Renaissance clothing,
Arthurian legend/history,
Legos,
cookie recipes,
writing poetry,
WWII (European theatre) historical fiction,
horses,
Catholic theology,
tole painting,
Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien writings,
candles,
Shakespeare...

Hi there and how are you all??

I know that it has been some time that I have written (about 2 weeks). Sorry I've just been busy with other things. Thanks for making me
feel appreciated and understood. Many people think I'm weird because
I collect children's clothes/shoes, and it is a hard hobby to find old
children's shoes to begin with from the 1970s and 1960s, so I am very thankful to all of you. Unfortunately, those interests that I listed are
my main interests and its very hard to really start a conversation with me unless you bring up some of those topics. I read in a book one boy with Asperger Syndrome couldn't talk to anyone unless it was about toilets and urinals. He'd go in the bathroom at school and explain about the different brands of toilets and all this stuff, which probably did not get him many
friends...lol.

One person (I can't remember who) made a comment about drawing maps of a pretend place. I do that pretty often. I used to do that in
high school and I still do now. Sometimes I draw maps of real places,
but other times I totally redraw an entire city (eg. Mt Shasta City, California), and change it to what I want it to look like. In other words,
I have streets on the map totally labeled as another street and not what
it is in real life. The names are totally different, or for that matter, most
of the time, the DIRECTIONS of the roads are totally not the same. It
looked as if though I tore apart the whole city and started up again from scratch. I actually tried to get a job as a city planner for Santa Clara
County (San Jose, California) where I live, but they rejected me, probably because I did not have enough experience. I would more than
love to design cities though and to name streets what I THINK they
should be named. One thing that really itches sorely is the fact that
there are very few highways/airports/libraries etc named after children.
That really does bother me a great deal. I think that children that die
tragically (ie. in the Oklahoma bombing or traffic accidents) should have
lasting memorials to them in terms of freeways and libraries and that stuff. One of the most touching moments for me was in 1999 (or maybe it was 2000) when Blake Ryan Kennedy (18 months old when he died in
the Oklahoma bombing in 1995 April 19) got immortalized in a library.
The school that he would have attended, Amber -Poccaset Elementary
School in Amber, Oklahoma (25 miles southwest of Oklahoma City),
named their library after him. It is now the Blake Ryan Kennedy Memorial Library. I thought that was raelly touching. There should be more of
this stuff - I mean, would it hurt to name Interstate 40 in Oklahoma City
the "Baylee Almon Memorial Skyway" downtown, after Baylee Almon, the
baby who was cradled by Firefighter Chris Fields after the Oklahoma City
bombing (she died, sadly). Would it hurt to name something after
Jon Benet Ramsey or Polly Klaas or something? I think children make a
huge contribution to society, toddlers even more so, but there's little dedicating things to them. It doesn't happen. They are seriously underappreciated. So if I had my own city, I'd be naming streets and boulevards, and freeways after kids too, and not just adults.

Maybe one of the reasons why I love toddlers so much is because I'm
like one myself. I don't know. It's kind of like I'm a forever 2 year old
and I never do grow up. I wouldn't even say like Peter Pan, I'm more
like Baby Bop on Barney and Friends! I used to love Barney and
Friends but now I can't stand it. After about 1996, I started losing interest in Barney. You should have seen me in high school in 1994, I was like the Barney on campus. Now I'm into Teletubbbies. When I first saw Teletubbies in 1998, I thought what a stupid show. But after I watched it a couple of times, I was seriously addicted. I have 5 Teletubbies backpacks
and I hope Teletubbies last forever!! ! I used to love Sesame Street too
but it is no longer as fun as it used to be because now it has turned into the Elmo show - about 40 minutes of Baby Bear and Telly pondering what to do, and 20 minutes of Elmo's World (Or Hell-mo as I call him). Elmo
used to be cute when he was introduced in the 1980s, but now he's a
living nightmare. UGH!! No more Ernie and Bert skits, no more Cookie
Monster stuff, all the good stuff died out after Jim Henson died in 1990.
Jim Henson's death meant the demise of Sesame Street. Noggin (cable)
carried old Sesame Street episodes for a while, but now THEY don't
ven do that. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.......................I loved all those episodes
with Ernie and Bert like the time the Count slept over with Ernie
in Bert's bed and counted to like 5 billion or something and the next
morning Bert asks him "You look so bright and chipper. You must have had a good night's sleep", and the Count says "Slept...who slept?". And
Ernie comes shambling in saying "5 million something.....5 million
something and one, 5 million something and two....and so on" and
then the Count asks Bert if "he could sleep over again tonight" and
Ernie cries and falls to the floor and faints. LOL. I thought that was
funny. Or when Kermit the frog was directing "O-klahoma" and
Forgetful Jones kept saying the wrong thing "A-klahoma" and
"I-klahoma" and so on. It was just funny watching Kermit get mad.
Or like Grover being a waiter and not helping the blue guy, Mr. Johnson.
Or the time Grover went and gave a telegram to Mr. Johnson and
he tells him he lost his favorite hat in Buffalo, but can't remember who the sender was. LOL. Now there's no funny stuff like that anymore. Thats
why Sesame Street is going down the drain.

Well anyway enough of my rambling and I hope you all have a great
day. Take care


Warm regards
Preston from San Jose, California

[email protected]

Hey, geowhizkid26, i am wondering how you came across that name. I used to live in Oregon, in SE Portland. I also have a colection of maps, cds and other things. About the nick name, did you make it up? I made geowhizkid when I was setting up my account on Yahoo. I have been to three geography bees, Ive gotten either five or sixth in theth state in every one I have been in. Oh and how old are you? I am 13, my bithday is on April 2nd, and I ahve two younger brothers, Chris (11), and Chase (4). I moved to Utah (Salt Lake City) in July, 2002. Anyways I just thought it is weird how you had your name as geowhizkid26.

PLZ reply

I've developed a strange new Obsession, last night. I'm now obsessed with the bit of footage where Wendy O Williams screams out "Oh, Yes...Oh No!" over and over again.

Those are normal. Some NT's even have those interests. My dad has AS and is so obsessed with maps it's not funny.

Everyone has different interests, the variety is so huge that it would be rather pointles to think you're abnormal for liking what you do.

My son started his map obsession at 4. He's cooled down a bit on that one since then, a bit, but still brings out his collection sometimes to look it over. He likes reading the key and looking for the symbols on the map, then seeing how far they are from our house. Then it was road signs and now cars. He knows the makes and models of cars just by looking at the details, like head light shapes or type of grill and has all the badges memorized. And how to read all the road signs you could think of. I wonder if he's getting ready for a major trip at some point LOL.

My obsessions (only listing the main ones):
Greek mythology. When I'd read everybook on that I could find, I started on mythology from other places.
Flora native to whatever area I happen to be living in at the time.
Birds native to whatever area etc...
Insects of ...
Weather
books about the history of languages
collecting OLD cookbooks
collecting OLD textbooks, esp. those for primary grades

When does an obsession stop being an 'obsession' and start being a 'hobby'? I was wondering if I shouldn't have included the book collections. But then, I read and reread them cover to cover, I guess that's obsessive?

My first major obsession was probably Greek mythology. I read through encyclopedias on it in elementary school. Then books, and then I went onto norse, and roman, I might have even looked a little into egyptian. I don't how many maps I have. But I have a tendency to pick up any free map at least. Whether its a building, park, city, state, or nation. I have cds of maps, books with maps, map books, fold maps, nat. geo. maps... I don't really know how many interests I have. For many, it seems to be the interest of the moment. Others are steady longterm interests, but even my interests of the moment I frequently come back to. For a few years, it has been RTK. I also like to find out all I can about truths behind myths and legends.

One of my favorite interests as well.

Anything that's electronic

I've been obsessed with Routemasters for my whole, entire life. Do you think that's unusual?

I'd say maps and old/obscure genres of music are pretty typical obsessive interests for AS. Maps was a big thing for me when i was a kid, i used to sit in the front seat of my dad's car (I insisted on it, relegating my mum to the back seat) and navigate with the road atlas for everywhere he went (he went all over the country for things like visiting historical sites, digging for fossils, nature reserves), and when no urgent navigation was needed, I'd "read" the atlas, looking at where numbered roads went and where towns were in relation to each other etc... with the result that, even though i don't and probably never will drive, i could tell you (at least roughly) where any numbered A or B road in the country goes to, and where even quite small towns (that i've never been to) are in terms of county or nearest major city... and music (of various genres) is definitely a "collector" thing for me now...

Children's shoes, IMO, is a bit odder, and not something i would immediately think of as a typical interest for someone with AS (in fact, collecting any sort of items of clothing is something i'd associate more with what i tend to see as the shallow/silly side of NTism), but i don't think it's in any way wrong... just something that might be harder to see as a "logical" interest by other Aspies... for me, at any rate, obsessive interests are easier to understand if the object of interest has some sort of intellectual/informational content...

I've also got to say that programmes aimed at very young children (such as Teletubbies, Barney or Sesame Street) are something that i actually find disgusting and disturbing (both the programmes themselves, and the idea of an adult being "into" them)... the only adults i know who actually seem to be into that kind of stuff are very NT women/girls (as part of that whole "ironic cuteness" thing, which is one thing i just don't get)... but again, i don't see anything "morally wrong" about an adult being into them, it just has kind of odd and disturbing mental associations for me...

I think there's a possibility that people might feel disturbed by you because of your interests (the shoes and the TV programmes) which relate to children... there's the whole paedophilia/Michael Jackson type of associations that (especially NT) people are olikely to make, even when an adult's "childlike" interests are (as i'm sure yours are) entirely "innocent"... I don't think the music or maps interests would cause a similar type of reaction... but i think (or would hope) that an AS community would accept anyone's obsessive interests (as long as they are not harmful to others) whether or not everyone else understood them, or they were "typically AS" or not... so i also second what hale_bopp said...

I have none of those obessions in common with you. I think I'm the weridest one yet.

I am sort of a map nut too. I want to get updated maps, becuase when I was little learning about maps, I thought it was cool, and it led to me liking them.

I definitely have a flora/fauna obsession, but especially insects. Noticing an unusual beetle or moth can distract me from anything, and I love documentaries on insects even more than on any other kind of wildlife. Flies are more interesting to me than lions. Usually at least once a day in spring, summer and autumn, I'll go and hunt round the garden for anything new. Last summer I spotted four different species of bumble bee and five different species of hoverfly among other things, and of course had to go and look up each one.

Some other fascinations/obsessions:

Calendars. It's something about dividing time up neatly into little sections like that. I never buy wall calendars that just have random pictures from a TV show or something on each page - it has to be one with images appropriate to that month, and the more information it has on it, like what happens/happened in history on that particular date each year, the better. I have an obsession with wanting to compartmentalize and label things like that in general.

Clocks and watches. Partly because of the time thing again, like calendars. Partly because I just love ones in the skeleton style where you can see all the mechanics working, ones with pendulums, etc. I'm obsessed with almost anything that's mechanical and intricate and moving and making sounds like that. With watches, it's also the smallness. Anything that's small yet very detailed has an irrestible appeal to me.

i have a small collection of pacifiers . They're nice to chew on when I study (they don't get all gross like pens and pencils, they're fairly easy to sterilize and they don't bleed like the skin on the sides of my fingers) plus they look interesting. Huge variety of colors and materials and shapes. I keep them in a discrete little box. Why don't I chew gum you might ask? Because gum feels all tacky after a while and doesn't last as long and you can't flick bits of it while you chew on it