Aspie Obsessions - Part 3

This #3 in a series of blogs about HistoryBoy's Asperger's obsesssions.

I've talked about HistoryBoy's obsession with Thomas and trains. But I haven't gotten to the good stuff yet. I am not sure but somewhere around age 6, I don't even know HOW, HistoryBoy became fascinated by the Titanic and everything that went with it. I have to say I knew the Titanic sank way back in the day and lots of people died but that was really the extent of my knowledge. I am not a history person, I do not know why, I have always loved Math and Science and while History is not excluded from those subjects, it just never grabbed me unless it was in a movie. LOL. So I was in for one heck of a learning experience.

Every book that he saw in the library he had to read about the Titanic. Every book he saw in Barnes & Noble he wanted to read and believe me we own quite a few of them.. Every documentary on the History Channel (there are several) he had to see as well. Did you know Orlando has a Titanic exhibit? HistoryBoy did. He found it and asked us, begged up, and pleaded with us to take him to it instead of a day at Disney World. This is my kid. It was a neat Titanic tour, about an hour long, I think, so if you need a break from the parks, this is something educational you can do. I think it was on I-drive, if you *are* interested. You can look it up Titanic: The Experience Orlando, or something like that.

Now I purposely kept Matt away from the movies of the Titanic because I really didn't think he was ready for all that. I mean what 6 year old really is. But he saw my mom had the VHS version of the James Cameron version of Titanic (which is 2 VHS tapes) and begged to watch it. So we sat down one afternoon to watch it together. He sat through it and cried through the whole end of it. He gave the 2nd tape back to my mom and said he never wanted to see that half again but he was going to keep the first half. I think it was one thing for him to know all the facts that 1500 people died in the sinking of the Titanic but the visualization was a lot to take in. The special effects of the James Cameron version were more vivid than any previous version and he has seen 3 or 4 other versions of Titanic since then.

While this particular obsession had abated somewhat, (you will see what I mean in tomorrow's blog) he still retains all this info. How do I know because his neurologist just asked him about the Titanic and he gave him a fifteen minute run down of the Titanic from the building of it to its sinking. The doc was impressed by his thoroughness. LOL. As am I ALWAYS!

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