first became fascinated with topology in high school. I was
   learning about black holes for a book report and somehow
   stumbled upon topology and deforming a coffee mug. In art class
   one day, I didn't follow the assigned project and instead took a
   ball of clay, made a mug, and started deforming it to make other
   shapes, for 45 minutes, without ever losing the hole... making
   it bigger and smaller but never losing it. So for a long time,
   topology was deforming a mug. Then I heard about knots. I still
   like deforming the mug in my mind, adding extra handles, keeping
   the holes intact... wondering if it was important to keep a
   section concave or convex and how many things i could do with
   it.... but then with the knots was almost easier: It's a loop.
   The challenge is to restore the loop. Oddly enough though, I'm
   terrible at tying/untying real world knots. But in my mind, it
   seems easy enough.