Toy Story 3 ruined my childhood (or memories of it):

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A few nights ago my partner and I were watching Toy Story 3 with another friend. I have to say that it ruined my image of my childhood. The little girl was playing with her toys and I started laughing because, seriously, who plays with toys like that? Needless to say, when my partner and friend looked at me like I was strange because I didn't play with toys, I made up some phoney excuse about being tired.

It kind of makes me sad that no one ever thought there was something odd about me. I didn't play with toys, I read books. My mom bought me a Barbie swimming pool and I spent hours running my hands in it, but I never engaged my Barbies with it. I didn't engage with anything, actually. I had neighborhood friends, sure, but I was just the pesky little girl who lived down the road. If they'd seen a movie, I'd seen it (not really, but I was terrified they'd ditch me if I wasn't just like them). We had a pool growing up and my mom had to explain to everyone that I liked water, I just didn't like to be engulfed. She also had to explain that I didn't like splashing and that I didn't want my arms to get wet. My mom had to explain so many different things to so many different people, I wonder why no one ever caught on. I mean, I grew up in the 90's, right when Asperger's gained popularity. I was selectively mute throughout Junior and Senior High! That right there should have said something.

Sigh, I'm just venting and this is the only place I could think of doing so.

Hi, Neighbor! (I live down the street in Middleburg!)

I can relate to what you're saying...it just really stinks when you have a revelation about your past & then have to decide whether or not to share it///have to explain yourself. Venting is good...are you seeing any kind of Dr or therapist? I've only just started on therapy & I really like her.

Diana

Yeah.
I would spend every waking hour in my room disassembling and reassembling the same lego vehicles, in exactly the same patterns. Putting exactly the same lego people inside them, and then dismantling them again (that's about as creative as I got: I decided they were at war with a robot my sister had built out of my construx toys. I would dismantle and rebuild the construx robot too. That was what from grade 5 all the way into my late teens. Maybe even longer.

Alternately I would rearrange my elephant figurines in ascending or descending order of size. This I did until my mother packed them up when I was 26, turning that room into her office.

I still have the elephants and the lego vehicles in boxes in my closet. They are safe there (though they come out every so often) because I have chinchillas who occassionally get loose, and I don't want to chance any chewing damage to my precious childhood.

Incidently, I collected transformers toys from the ages of 23? until 27? and they are now in the same box-limbo; I cycle out five or six of them to live a top my computer even to this day. Right next to my Rubik's Magic Squares.

But did I ever actually act like a normal kid. Or teen. Or adult. Not really.
I wasn't even interested in music until grade 13, when a fiend bought me a CD for my birthday.
Perfectly happy with my tv, or a book, in the basement, with my 12 cans of soda a day.
And lining up my elephants when tv time was curtailed.

I guess a lot of people don't, and don't want to, notice these things and so they push them away unless it's very severe and obvious and dramatically brought to their attention. The title of this thread's kind of sad, though- just remember that any good memories are still good. Just because they may be different to the experiences of typical children doesn't mean they weren't still wonderful at times in their own way

I can relate to what you're saying, though. I didn't really play with toys in the usual way, I guess, though what is the usual way, really? I do have a picture in which I've brought all my toys downstairs and arranged them all in size order, and there were a lot of them! I also read more than played with toys.

Different isn't always necessarily bad. Why play with toys just because it's the "typical" thing to do when you don't get anything out of it? Also, I guess you don't really care quite as much about the typical way of doing things when you're really young.

I've not seen Toy Story 3 but I'm really wondering what goes on in it now.

I was the same way when I was, well, younger. My dad bought me a polly pocket pool in 2006, and the only thing I did with it is filled it with water and turned on the pump for the built in water fall, and stared at it until bed time. The earliest I can remember doing that was when we were in a motel on the Oregon coast.

For the first year of my school days I made the exact same ship with lego again and again and no one except one foolish boy noted it as odd. I was so odd in school and my teachers were to imcompetant to see anything other then me being "shy".

I think we both have al ittle resentment over being diagnosed late - why didn't they notice it sooner? it was obvious!