Obsessions

My wonderfully talented fellow blogger Christina recently did a cartoon categorising her son's interests into 'eras'. 

It really struck a chord with me - Billy too goes through stages where he is completely obsessed with a topic, and then just as suddenly, he switches to a new one.

Some of the stages I remember are:

* The Doodlebops era - this was a Canadian kid's show with brightly coloured 'people' - lots of singing and dancing.  This was possibly as far back as preschool days for him.  Every day he'd watch the Doodlebops over and over again, want to dress up like them, make instruments like them. 

* The magic era - he was obsessed with magic some time after that.  Watching magic shows, learning magic tricks, putting on magic shows to anyone who would stand still (or not!)

* The Ben 10 era - a kid's cartoon about a young boy who fights aliens by turning into various creatures with the help of his watch-like Omnitrix.  This was only a year or so ago.  He had (probably still has somewhere) the Ominitrix, the Ben 10 games, the Ben 10 pyjamas.... 

* The Simpsons era - this was last year from my very shaky memory.  He had to watch every single episode of the 20(?) seasons of the Simpsons.  Several times.  Now he denies ever liking them :)

* The Club Penguin era - Suji can attest to this one.  A kid's online gaming community where you 'waddle round and meet new friends'...

* The Minecraft era - this is the latest.  An online game where you wander round and build things out of materials that you mine from the ground. 

I actually realised you can track a lot of his eras by what cake he had for that birthday party!

We've had smaller obsessions along the way where he will watch every season of a show constantly - Prank Patrol and Scorpion Island spring immediately to mind.  They come and go...

Then of course are the book stages - the Dr Seuss phase, the Roald Dahl phase, the Goosebumps phase.  Currently its a Specky Magee phase.

And when he's in one of those phases, every single word that comes out of his mouth seems to start with "In Ben 10 / The Simpsons / Minecraft / Club Penguin / insert current obsession here ..."

Mind you, I don't want to look too closely at myself and my own interests or I might just find a similar trend (hmmm, the frugal stage, the gardening phase, the knitting phase, the writing phase...)  Yep, better not to go there!