Were you a pyromaniac?

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I know, I put this in the General Autism category, b/c I'm wondering if anyone had a tendency to be obsessed with fire as a "special interest", enjoyed watching things burn, lighting matches on paper, wrappers, etc.

When I was 13-14, I admit that I enjoyed playing with matches, to the point where the cops caught me once when I had a bunch of matchbooks that I put on the ground amidst all these old newspapers I scrounged up, it was outside some plaza - I was kind of a nihilist at that point, having endured horrible bullying then and not knowing what was "wrong with me" (this was in the late '80s). So they shouted at me, took me aside and demanded all my info, my mom got the call and she was super-pissed... she had no idea I had that obsession...so that pretty much shut that down, except for a few random but rare times after that (for which I didn't get caught).

I enjoyed watching explosions in action movies, and at at least one restaurant where I remember there was some kind of open flame of different colours, which fascinated me. But I guess I moved out of that stage. On the darker side of things, I admit that at that age, I had fantasies of my school blowing up from a random missile out of the blue, then it just burned like the place of hell that it was. So maybe that's where part of "Aspie pyromania" could possibly have come from, some deep repressed misanthropist desire. I guess in a more symbolic sense, fire symbolizes renewal or rebirth of something grander (in my fantasy example, a more benign and compassionate human race), I dunno, something like the Phoenix or the city of London after the Great Fire of 1666.

I recall telling classmates about my pyromania, and I just received some comments that were more or less expected, like "oh, well we always knew you were effed up" or "man, you're really messed up in the head, one day I think you're gonna do something completely insane"... perhaps it conjured up some archetype of the deranged loner who wants to watch the world burn or something.
Maybe some of you have heard of the MacDonald Triad - which is the trifecta of behaviours exhibited by serial violent offenders, and it consists of harming animals, abnormal continuance of bed-wetting, and fire starting. So I can honestly say that I only exhibited the last one... which is probably a good thing here I am a third of a century after those messed-up moments, and things turned out for the best.

So, seriously fellow Aspies, if you're gonna have a special interest in fire, then at least translate it into a worthy discipline that drives you in life, like in one of the engineering fields. I don't think a firefighter job is in the cards for 99.9% of us, since it requires quick sizing up of situations without too much analysis (or paralysis ), motor coordination for ladders and hoses etc., and you have to work really odd hours that fluctuate fairly often. Plus you're surrounded by alpha-male types who probably won't consider you "one of them" and might treat you harshly.

Maybe a little bit...

^ Brave, I didn't want to be first

Maybe a little bit too...

I played with fire a lot as a kid. I (mostly) stopped when I almost caught my room on fire once...

Still a pyro.

Peer pressure will do that. Not a pyromaniac. But did play with matches. And lighters. And aerosols spray cans.

I think every kid goes through that phase. The urge to set things on fire.

My granddad was.

My friend wanted to set school on fire. He had a plan. Start the fire in bathroom, he had materials already. I don't think he was serious though. He might have been joking around. But school was closed one day. Might have been a bomb scare, I remember school was once evacuated for something like that.

Lots of incident with fire. Trying to start them out in open places. Kids love fire. It never amounted to anything. I mean property damage. Burning bushes maybe. Damaged trees. Miscellaneous small Items.

Quite the opposite, I have a fear of fires, except for controlled fires like bonfires.

As a small child I would have panic attacks whenever there was a fire drill at school because I thought there was a real fire.

I'm. I also enjoy the smell of smoke when the fire dies off. Better if it's from a matchstick.
If only my nose isn't physically sensitive.

It helps a bit back when fireworks were more legal from where I came from.


But never to a point of special interest however.
More like one of the few things I could consider as a toy... A dangerous toy obviously, more dangerous than rusted tools.

Instead of a lighter or a box of matchsticks, I have a magnifying lens.

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I think my interest in fire was about average. However, I can get a wood stove going with very little effort.

More blowing stuff up than setting it on fire, but same general idea.

Though I never had interest in causing damage, I definitely played with fire a lot.

I was interested in explosives too and once got busted on school property with a freshly printed copy of the terrorists handbook.

Luckily this was 90s Australia where they'd write it off to kid shenanigans.

I made a pneumatic cannon with rather impressive performance, too.

You could say I was a bit of a pyromaniac when I was younger. I actively collected fireworks to take apart and use to make much better fireworks. There is a process to keep them functioning long term. I did this until I learned how to make my own explosives from scratch that were better than the ones you could purchase at a stand. There is an old farm house owned by my uncle that I got to use as an experiment station. Forget model rockets, we made metal rockets and missiles there. Ahh, the memories of the good ole days back in the 1980s. You simply cannot do some of that today and get away with it.

It was not the start of my interest in chemistry, but did definitely contribute to it.