Most kids have hobbies growing up, and youth in the 1960s and ’70s weren’t an exception. Long before the advent of home video game systems, the internet, and other modern marvels that entertain adolescents today, younger Baby Boomers and Gen X kids often found themselves active in the outdoors during their spare time. Whether it was riding bikes with friends, playing pick-up games of football and basketball, or simply having hangs on a friend’s lawn, the youth of those generations had plenty of things to keep them from the confines of their parents’ homes.
The hobbies Dahmer engaged in were much more intense than shooting hoops or trading baseball cards with the neighbor kids. As a child, Dahmer began to develop an interest in dead animals, beginning when he and his father found a dead rodent under their house. According to Carl Wahlstrom, the forensic psychiatrist who examined Dahmer in prison, the intentions were coming from a pure place. Dahmer’s father was a research chemist and wanted to show his young son how chemicals can work to eat away at a body’s flesh and connective tissues to leave bare bones (via A&E).
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The bones that the two collected over time were placed into a metal pail, where a young Dahmer would play with them. His family affectionately referred to them as his “fiddlesticks,” a container of morbid playthings that would keep him occupied, like a rattle.
