Me the addict 1/8

I managed to collect as many as 8 addictions in the past 8 or 9 years, and when I say addictions, I mean addictions; sometimes I even think these habits are driven by OCD, but it doesn’t make it an addiction.

My first addiction was long before High school, it started with reading, I was three or four years old when my parents started feeding me with books, I didn’t read about politics and rocket science when I was 4 but I had tons and tons of the baby books, then when I started to read properly my father begun to surprise me with new books every month, until the day came and discovered my aunts stash of every issue of “Majalat Majed” Majed Magazine , at the time I didn’t start going to formal school, I use to go to Al-Bahrain Day time Nursery, and had a goal set of reading all the magazines before I go to school, I wasn’t that ambitious as a kid for the record, I was just a stubborn child who wants to proof to his youngest aunt who was 5 years older than me, that I can read as many magazines as she did in 2 years, hahah I think it was the best challenge I ever had.

I had daily access to the wooden shack in the back yard where the dusty boxes of Majalt Majed were stored, in the beginning it took me a whole day to read the magazine, and my day was from 1 am until the sun sets, in a few weeks I was eating those pages like an African wood worm, and I decided to read the weekly magazine every Wednesday so she doesn’t get an edge on me, it was a very informative year, Majalat Majed back in the day was amazing, it had topics ranging from coloring, short stories, series stories, history, 101 politics to Islam and general information, and for a kid, it looked like a game, the more I did it, the better I got.

I used to keep reading and reading, even when it was really hot, the hot days were better to me because the days were longer and could cover more issues and it was fun, then my aunt came up with the idea of introducing me to Mujaldat Majed, she used to hide these in the house, and they were great, one was about naqeeb Khalfan and Areef Fahman, the police pffocers, and one about mooza al habooba and he silly brother, and many others, I did nothing that summer but reading, I didn’t go out, didn’t bother learning how to ride a bike, only thing I wanted was to pull my hand out of the empty last box.

When that day came, I had to replace the magazines with something, I the first place I searched was my grandpas room, and it wasn’t long until I found stacks of Akhbar Al-Khaleej, a daily news paper that my grandfather refuses to change, and that was a big jump from my magazines, but was fun, the news paper had many new words, words that make people go quite and listen when a 6 year old talk, I loved that, my game was growing with me.

Then I had to read in school and the teachers loved it, I was always the first to volunteer to read in class, not because I loved to read, but because I was the best as it, and I wanted to always be the best in class, so I had to read more than any one else (I wish I took math the same way) and started reading from my fathers library, now we are talking about real books, and to be honest there was nothing there that I understood before the age of 8.

I started going to regular trips to the bookshop with my mom, when I got back home, I used to read those books like I had to take them back the next day, only to finish them as before the next Wednesday so I can get more, and every Wednesday like a train, always the same bookshop always the same time, it was twice the fun when Dad wasn’t working and came out with us, he used to buy me twice the number of books my mom buy, not only I was good at reading, I was the worst nagger the world seen and he hated it.

This is getting long and boring, and will try to write about my other addictions every now and then.