I can stop anytime I want. When I'm dead for instance.
I have a very clear memory of the day I bought my first book; the first book that wasn’t a hand me down or household communal property. It was a book not to be read to me at bedtime, but one that I could read all by myself. I was in first grade, and it was my first year in a school that taught primarily in English. It was the first year after Kuwait’s liberation. I was learning a whole new language and the possibilities seemed endless. I went with my mother to a bookstore downtown; it was down the street from the Sheraton roundabout. I remember feeling excited and proud and so very grown up.
My memory of the book is vague but affectionate, like a much beloved photograph faded by time and the touch of too many hands. The pages were stiff cardboard and it was brightly colored, I remember the blues, reds, and yellows shining out at me like never before. It was about anthropomorphic animals receiving a series of phone calls, and when you finished the sentence on a page you could press a button that would ring cheerfully at you just like a telephone. Sometimes, I would daringly press the button without even finishing the sentence.
Looking back, the book must have been made for a younger child, but I might as well have discovered the atom. It was just that huge. As a child, I never had much interest in other kids. A curious amalgam, I was an antisocial chatterbox. I enjoyed asking questions but more than that I love to talk. On and on I’d go in these monologues about everything and nothing. But reading was better than all of that. I took the plunge, and I’ve never looked back.
Reading quickly became the most important thing in my life. It was like an obsession, an addiction; I just couldn’t get enough. I read in during recess, during class, in bed, in the car, even in the shower. I remember my bemused parents catching on and putting me through searches at the bathroom door.
I was (to my eternal shame) a fan of the Baby-Sitters Club and the Sweet Valley High books, until I was about 14. After that I spent a summer as a hardcore John Grisham fan, my mother spent that summer parceling out his books in daily doses worried that I’d blind myself if I read more than one a day. Scattered among these were The Outsiders, A Wrinkle in Time, and The Narnia Chronicles. If I ran out I’d go into a panic, one memorable time reading the backs of cereal boxes to hold me over until I got to the school library.
It made being grounded a very odd experience, my parents carting away my books in a big box. Being sent to my room was never really an effective punishment for me. They could take away my television privileges, but they could never manage to take away all my books. I was a devious little thing, hiding supplies underneath my mattress and in my underwear drawer. Although I would worry that my grounding would outlast my secret stash. My greatest fear growing up was boredom. I remember the agony of being banned from the school library once, when my teachers where unhappy with my grades; a punishment both cruel and unusual.
Through the years, I’ve picked up and discarded dozens of other interests and hobbies, but in my heart I’ve always stayed true to reading. I’ve changed, grown up, learned to function in polite company. I’ve made friends, and even liked some enough to keep them. Sometimes I’d even go for months without cracking open a book. Well, weeks at least. A couple of times probably.
In the end though, I’ll always come back to literature. You never forget your first love.
