Obsessions and autism

It seems to me that lots of kids with autism tend to get obsessed with certain things. Movies, toys, characters, collections and books. Parker is currently obsessed with Firefighters, Spongebob, The Wiggles,The 3 Stooges, Dispicable Me, Fireman Sam and of all things, Noahs ark. He really is into Noahs ark. He's not amused that Noah is seemingly wearing a dress. That bothers him a lot. I told him it's like a long shirt. That seems to help him deal with it. He likes that Noah is old, builds a boat and has a bunch of animals. He must have 15 books about Noah. He likes to hear about the people being bad and the flood. Something about it really catches his attention. I'm glad he is interested in the bible. He picks out bible stories when we go to the dollar store. He seems happy about learning even though he does not like to think or talk about death. (It comes up a lot in bible stories) His obsession with firefighters is a daily thing. He likes to drive by the fire station and see if the doors are open or if anyone is there. (Its volunteer) He likes to look for people in fire station clothes and t-shirts when we are out. He asks me all the time why paid fire stations don't have the word, "Paid" on the outside of the building since volunteer ones have the word volunteer on the outside. He has many questions. Recently we had a big fire in our town and he went to see the last of the fire being put out. He was very excited but sad about the businesses being burned down. His major complaint was that he saw women firefighters. He is a little sexist when it comes to women in uniform. He always wants to know if each fire station has women working there. I try and try and reason with him but he always go back to not liking it. However, if he meets a woman firefighter he is still excited about it. He is a funny guy. He is very obsessed with his computer and its a chore to get him off it. He watches videos, plays computer games (easy ones) and looks up pictures of things he likes with my help. He is learning to read and spell but not enough to let him search for things. His obsessions make him very happy. I love buying him things that he is really into. This last birthday it was Spongebob and it made it really easy to shop for him. I hate it when he gets in his Fireman Sam phase because everything thing he wants is mostly in England. I have to search ebay and Amazon and half the time the dvds I order don't work on American dvd players or computers. All the toys you can order online are super expensive too. Right now it's still firefighters, Noah's ark and the 3 Stooges. Those are pretty easy to find. Whatever makes him happy I try and learn about. Boy am I glad he's out of his construction phase. It was hard remembering all the names of all the vehicles. Hopefully one day he'll get obsessed with something that he can do for a job. What are your kids obsessions? Here are a few pics of Parkers obessions. Notice the Mermaid Man costume for Halloween. I was Barnacle boy. It was not pretty, lol. For some reason it is not dividing my paragraphs. I'll have to figure this out.