Do you know the origin of your special interest(s)?

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I knew from a very small age where each country is located, what its flag looks like, its capital etc.
That was so much fun to associate icons and colours to places and names... I even drew "imaginary" maps
I really LOVED looking at the political ones, with the contrasting colours for each country, and the borders... Especially the US borders! They were so straight. Hated physical maps, though. Was just not the same.

After that got addicted to my football club - it's an everlasting ritual, I've always wondered how my life would be like without knowing it's always there in Staurday... As the not-so-rare-Aspie I was horrible at really playing it, of course, but could talk about if for hours. Every team in the world, every league, every player... I would walk around at home, with the sports section, and and I just kept reading stuff to my mother, who obviously didn't care

I can't exactly remember how my special interest started. However, I do remember it started around 2003 (when I was 9) during a trip to Florida. The villa I stayed in had a SpongeBob SquarePants DVD, and that was where I watched SpongeBob for the first time. I remember watching it a few times at home after that, but I didn't start becoming a true fan of itt until one year later, where I slowly started watching it more. Before I knew it, I became obsessed with it!

In the Beginning topic

This thread is fascinating. I have learned a lot about interesting specialitiesof other members. All very special, unique and absorbing!!

My first interests and collections were keys and buttons.They both open and close other parts, and keep things together. I was always interested in books, too--factual reading, rarely fiction, unless it had a visual component, like C.S. Lewis' books, though if need be, I would read anything available. Not an early reader, but I persevered. At age ten I became fascinated with WWII and then I discovered The Holocaust one day when I was looking for a science book--someone had misshelved Child of the Holocaust, by Jack Kuper, a Canadian survivor of genocide in Poland in WWII, and at the age of 12 The Holocaust and other genocides became an all consuming interest. I learned empathy and global perspectives from reading about HaShoah. From here I became interested in philosophy (Sartre and Wittgenstein), some genres of literature (Kafka and short story authors of the 19th and 20th-21st centuries), biographies, justice, morbid anatomy, historical periods that shaped our lives, scientific theories--all this growing out of keys and buttons! Very pataphysical!

This tree continues to grow both above and below ground, expanding exponentially. Amazing. I hope others' interests do likewise.

Drawing: I was 2 or 3, I had a texta in my hand, there was a wall so I scribbled at drawing of a cat with wheels as feet on it. Since then I've drawn all my life. Despite being dragged against my will to art classes when I was around 9 it was the moment where I really began to learn some techniques that have been etched into my brain and will never escape.
When I was 10 I won the very first art award plaque out of years 3-6. I was in year 5 and was a low achieving student in every subject but art. I had my painting of wolves displayed in the halls. I think the school still has it.
Now drawing is whatever I do when I'm bored.

Politics (Anarchy then Communism): I was 16 or 17, it was the time of the Afghan war. I was confused about it so looked it up online. I'm really not sure how I got into it. All I remember is asking what Communism was and got a really uneducated answer from a parent, so I looked it up again and again and again.My sister was an anarchist so pushed it onto me and for awhile I did become one, but then I turned back to communism, real communism. Now it's something that feels like it is a part of me.

Photography: When I was 10 my dad bought me my own camera. A simple Ricoh film camera. Being obsessed with animals back then all I did was take photos of my pets.
Eight years later I took it to my first concert. It was international band Alexisonfire with a stellar lineup of local talent. I look back at this gig as the most important one. Throughout the years I would see those local bands again and even take better photos of Alexisonfire.
Basically after that Alexisonfire gig I went to Resist's Christmas show which my brothers band was playing at. I showed my photos from that gig to friends and family and they said that I should go professional. I was nervous at first. There was already a photographer and I didn't know if I'd ever be as good as her. But I stuck at it and 6 years later I take photos for two sites, I'm on call to a media training school that I take promotional photos for, I've had my photos in 3 exhibits (1 was my own exhibit) and oh yes the Ricoh is in retirement, I use a Canon 40D slr with an assortment of lenses and attachable flashes.

Thursday: Christmas day, 2004. My sister is complaining how crap the music is. My brother is listening to War All the Time by Thursday. I don't fall in love then but when I see From Autumn to Ashes my friends are listening to it in their car, so I decide to get my hands on the album. My eldest sister already had Full Collapse their previous album so she gave it to me. Obviously not the same sister that said they were crap.
From there I grew to love the band. I have t-shirts, hoodies, posters all around my room, setlists and pretty much every album Thursday have ever released.
There was a time where if anyone would say anything negative about Thursday I'd give them a slap across the head or look at them as though they looked like a disgusting spider. Now I just ignore them and their bad music taste.

You Am I: I once decided to take photos of You Am I in 2006 to grow my photography portfolio alone. I remember their gig; old sweaty creepy men I though they were. I only like their young guitarist. Tim Rogers repulsed me and their fans annoyed me. They would let the man get away with murder they worshipped him so much. So why did I keep going back? I really don't know. The memories of that night stayed with me and Tim Rogers was doing solo shows everywhere, though I was disgusted at his arrogance I kept going to his solo shows. He was still as arrogant as ever. Then I got into the guitarists other band The Pictures. They were a cute 60's-ish band.
Then I befriended the You Am I fans. For some reason out of all the bands I've seen live I decided I would go to their online forum.
Then I started to listen to You Am I, they weren't so bad. I didn't think it was music I'd ever get obsessed with but I did. I started to see why everyone admired Tim so much, and found out for myself how much of a nice guy he was.

Matthew Davies: This welshman is a singer, socialist, film maker, photographer and husband. I first met him on Myspace. I was in my most depressive mood ever, stuck in a college doing a course that I didn't want to do. Somehow this front man from Funeral For a Friend took an interest in me and started to talk to me. My low mood was gone and my obsession with Matt was born. I did take it a bit too far. I was an obsessed fangirl that would constantly message and comment him. But over the years I've learned to give him his space and only talk to him a few times a month, if even that. When his band tours over here he gives me photo passes and we keep in contact the whole time. It's a friendship that I definitely don't take for granted and I'm constantly surprised why it exists as the man's photos are all over my door.
His band is the most important band to me. I can understand the lyrics in a way that not many fans can. And if people talk crap about FFAF I will slap them.

Science: My love of science was born a few years ago after learning about Einstein. Then I kept trying to look up more about science. I read magazines like Popsci, New Scientist and whatever I could get my hands on. It wasn't enough though. Then I got into astronomy, so very very much. Basically all I got for Christmas were books on astronomy and a magazine subscription to an astronomy magazine. I even bought a telescope so I can look at constellations and planets.
I've always been a bit apprehensive learning about evolution because of my upbringing, but I remember passing a book at a charity stand and it was a fat book on evolution. I think it actually was The Orion of Species. I lusted after that book as though it was forbidden fruit. Enough is enough I thought one day, I'm going to look up evolution. To hell with my ignorance, to hell with my upbringing - I hadn't been in a church for two years. So I looked it up and well it makes more sense than the story of creation. That said, I still believe in God.

Let's see... the earliest one I can remember was with Roy Rogers. I must have been 2 or 3 years old. No idea how it came on me. Next, it was Popeye (I had a running special interest in super heroes until I hit puberty - Popeye, Superman, Green Lantern - I still love spinach.) Again, no idea how or why on that one.

My interest in rockets & the space program in the mid-60s was definitely fueled (so to speak) by news coverage of the Gemini & Apollo programs - but it was difficult for me to get anything but the most basic & outdated information regarding how everything worked, since much of the actual data was classified. That was my first technical/engineering-related interest. When the space program foundered in the early-70s, so did my interest.

That was replaced by my growing interest in music (beginning as a pre-teen with the Monkees - probably more of an infatuation.) By the time I was 12, I was heavily into early jazz - especially Louis Armstrong. I think I was exposed to that as part of a unit in 6th grade on African Americans (in West-central Wisconsin, in the late-60s, few people in my home town had ever met anyone who wasn't of European descent.) Anyway, my dad had an extensive record collection of 78 & 45 rpm records to feed my interest. That's when I first thought about becoming a drummer. I read every book in the school library about jazz & listened to hundreds of original recordings. From early jazz, to swing, to bebop - my musical tastes definitely didn't fit in with my peers - except for one geeky friend who was obsessed with 78 rpm records (not so much what was recorded on them - he just loved the physical objects.)

Anyway, when my interest in space began to lack for fuel, music was right there waiting to take over. It totally consumed my life for the next 25 years - until I reached a point where I could not sustain it as a career (very long story - which sort of led to my discovery of Asperger's Syndrome - but way, way off-topic.) There were lots of sub-Special Interests along the way - drum & bugle corps, Patti Smith, Kate Bush (female vocalists, in general), concert marimba, big-band jazz, etc. But the short version, is: (1) my career as a school band director never took off, (2) my interim career as an Army bandsman was great, but not exactly where I wanted to go, (3) my desired career as a civilian musician failed, due to my complete inability to network.

I decided to retrain into a field that was related to engineering & involved computers (some strong, but not "special" interests), so I enrolled in a drafting/mechanical design program. It turned out that 3D computer modeling was destined to become my next big Special Interest. If economic pressures hadn't forced me to seek training in a suitable skill, I probably never would have stumbled upon that interest.

It could be because all my classmates were focusing on the minimum standards of the course - which was 2D drafting - that I decided to focus on 3D. It just seemed cooler to me (and I've never been inclined to follow the crowd - success has always come to me because I was focusing on something no one else cared about at the time.) It turned out that 3D modeling was the future for mechanical design - so while my classmates were scrambling to learn how to visualize 3-dimensional objects on a computer screen, I was good to go.

Special Interests definitely choose me - not the other way around. But I tend to help things along by being open to new ideas & focusing on things that people with typical brains tend to miss. (Or it could be that I'm oblivious to the trends that people with typical brains like to follow - and I've just been extremely lucky that some of the things I've been interested in were destined to become trends.)

Ok first

Watch-I have always loved watching anything. Tv, videos on the computer, movies. The tv was my babysitter when I was a child when my mom home schooled teenagers. Watching anything has been my life forever.

Read-Before I could read I used to make up my own stories and read the books that I made up to my brother. Then after second grade I just read so much and looked forward to one day a year during school where you spent the whole half a day or whole day reading while eating snacks.

Listen-Before sixth grade I only listened to the oldies. In sixth grade I found Green Day and they opened my world. I started to listening to everything from Blink 182 to Eminem.

Look-When in sixth grade and found p*** I found pictures and found out you can create so much with just an image. I did take a photography class in highschool but you know how we are with our small muscles.

Now I want to be able to Wrll anything. If challenged me to watch something I could.

I fixate on patterns and classifying. Early play involved collecting and sorting. Around 3rd grade it focussed on biology - either plants or animals - stayed there till 6th grade - dad in Classics, we go to Greece, I am sorting pieces of ancient potery we picked up and recognizing a new style of ceramic from one place in Crete.

Then 11th grade it moved over to writing systems, then words and languages - pretty much it though I will classify anything that holds still long enough.