What was your wierdest obsession growing up?

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Hmm...I had quite a few as a kid, but I don't exactly know how 'weird' they were...
I, like many others who have already posted, had an obssession w/ stones and gemology. I would even as far as geology.
I also was obsessed w/ my mother's, who is a nurse practitioner, medical and pharmacology books. I was especially interested in pharmacology, since I found the way that drugs interact w/ the human body, in order to cure or elliviate the symptoms of many diseases, to be fascinating. However, there was a big downfall associated w/ reading all of my mother's medical books... There was a six-month period where I suffered from 'disease of the week'! It was quite scary. In retrospect, the symptoms of most diseases are quite similar. I could always enough symptoms, in order to rationalize the disease at hand. For example:
* Fatigue - yeah I feel a bit tired (probably from the insomnia I had at the time, but I was not thinking about that).
* Headache - Yeah, I have had many headaches lately (I have a history of stress headaches and Migraines).
* Weight loss - Hmm, I do recall dropping a couple pounds (Umm...Normal weight fluctuation).
* I’m sure you can figure out a few of your own examples…

Buddhism was another obsession of mine....

I also have made hundreds of lists...I never thought of them as a weird obsession...and it is something I do currently as an adult...but I have been doing that since I was a kid....they are awful repetative, when I go back and read them, I admit...they include several catagories....art/music project ideas, household chores, an order in which to execute tasks...etc.etc..etc...i always figured they were more pertaining to my obsessions than an obsession in and of themselves...

Twin Peaks started, I think, when I was about 14-or maybe had just turned 15....I was so completely obsessed, it wasn't funny. I WISH i had this group photo taken at a party that took place for the season finale where everyone at the party was dressed like a character from twin peaks. i was Audrey Horne...a girl in a wheel chair was Laura Palmer, wrapped in plastic...and so on.....I was in such hysterics by the end of the last episode, they almost dragged me out of the living room.

I have always and still do love electricity Pylons. I am also quite obsessed with voltage and current transformers.
I think I prefer Current (amps) to voltage although seriously high voltage is exciting.

My weirdest obsession growing up was death. At least it left me feeling perfectly fine with the fact that I will die one day, as in order to have an obsession like that you kind of have to come to terms with that fact, which some people never do.

Human sacrifice. I'm still a bit obsessed with it now.

I was also obsessed with noses.

I was obsessed with the penis between the ages 6 and 8. I used to chant about the penis, calling it a tail.

While I don't think video games themselves are a weird obsession, I used to make lists of all the different levels or items that could be collected or characters, etc. Guess it's helped me to memorize every single little thing in each of them.

Caterpillars. I still entertain that obsession, too -- I love butterflies and enjoy planning out gardens with specific species in mind.

Dogs and dog breeds I still remember all of them.

Also, memorizing things. Historical dates and figures, spellings, numbers and such

Pregnancy and childbirth. I started being obsessed with it from an early age, and I would stuff pillows/plush toys into my shirt and pretend to give birth. I also created stories and drawings of my favorite fictional characters being pregnant and giving birth. It was also fun coming up with what their children would be like, like what their names would be, which traits they would inherit from their parents, how many siblings they had (I was especially fond of twins).

I still like to imagine my favorite fictional characters being pregnant and imagining their children, but the obsession is way less intense than it was when I was a child and teenager. I don't even draw pictures of it anymore.

Well, my weirdest one was orchids/ houseplants. Like, my bedroom became a jungle with all the plants I had persuaded my parents to get me or had started from cuttings I got from my grandma's house. But I'd also obsessively read books about orchids/bromiliads/houseplants and memorize the names, and the classifications, and how to breed them, and to this day I can still name and identify any orchids, though it doesn't come up very often.

My most intense interest ever was pokemon though. It's difficult to detach them from my childhood, elementary school through middle-school . . . and I run the danger of relapsing; I see the new cards at convenience stores and remember the smell of opening packs and staring at holos and knowing exactly how valuable every card was and assembling decks and trading them and knowing everything about every pokemon and how emotional I'd get over new pokemon episodes . . . I have a three year old younger brother though so lately I've been brainwashing him into loving them. Pokemon works so perfectly because it's such a multifaceted thing. I can alternate between pointing to pokemon and making him name them and tell me stuff about them and say what they evolve into, and teach him how to play the gameboy games, and feed him pokemon cards one by one and tell him why each pokemon is especially awesome, and watch pokemon episodes with him on my laptop . . . occasionally it makes him violent at daycare etc. but I'm sure I'm making his life slightly more awesome through the influence.

Diseases. My parents had this medical book and I'd be fascinated by all the diseases. Hemophila, Epilepsy, Dengue Fever.

Later on it was dissociative identity disorder (which I believe is not entirely a hoax. True, it was massively over diagnosed in a type of hysteria, but it has been documented since at least Paracelsus.) I'd come up with lists of all my different personalities I wanted to have, like "The Wolf" who was a feral child, or "The Robot" who operated entirely on logic.

Speaking of which, feral children became an obsession of mine, particuarly Genie for a while. I only passed an advanced Psychology and language class in college (with a B) because I did a paper on her. Logical Positivism and the finer points of Chomsky went over my head. (I made the mistake of going directly from Psych 101 to an advanced class)

My weirdest obsession must be my newest obsession: Tardigrades ( Also called Waterbears or mosspiglets) They are so fascinating..

Let's see...

As a kid...
I was obsessed with caterpillars/butterflies (already covered);
I was obsessed with orb weaver spiders
I was obsessed with antique violins
I was obsessed with the original NES for a long time (even after super NES came out --I refused to jump on that bandwagon )
I was obsessed with Jack London books and still am

...and that's all I can think of right now.

I like to learn grammar!
When most people find it boring.
and I liked dinosaurs when I was a child.

I was obsessed with horticulture and botany. That's not a really weird interest to have, if you're a retiree or something, but it wasn't really something my peers shared with me in elementary school.