"I guess you could say that I 've a call"

Am I the only one with this crazy addiction to stationeries? Ever since I was a little kid I have always been looking forward to September 1st, the day when the new academic year starts in primary and secondary schools. The main reason of my awaiting wasn't exactly about school  and studying though, but because a new academic year meant a trip with my Mom to the best and biggest stationery store in town and I got new writing, drawing, and painting materials. I have always been enchanted by the wonderful world of stationeries: all the  finely checked and lined notepads, notebooks and journals of different shapes, sizes, and covers, ballpoint, gel, fountain, and felt-tip pens, watercolors, paintbrushes, ereasers,  coloring pencils, crayons, chalks, cartridges with all the different colored inks, pencilcases, bookbags, etc, etc... It's a completely different world with a very special atmosphere, isn't it?

Although I finished secondary school several years ago, and I could get through university with simple white copy paper and a cheap ballpoint pen, I still cannot pass by a stationery's without popping in, you know, just for a second, just to take a look around, for I might come across some real treasure. These days I always keep an eye out for hardcover, finely lined notebooks, as I am very particular when it comes to keeping a journal. So whenever I bump into a notebook that meets my criteria, I always buy it, becuase who knows when the next will be that I can find such a great notebook?! This is why you will find at least half a dozen perfect but empty notebooks in the drawer of my desk, all waiting and ready to be filled with words. 

Being a true graphomaniac, I am truly, deeply, and madly addicted to pens, especially fountain and rollerball pens. (I cannot care about simple ballpoints anymore...) Although I don't write that much with pens any more, every single time I go into a stationery shop (so every time I walk by one...), I (must) buy a pen, usually a rollerball, probably a kind I either really love or a brand I haven't tried yet. I guess this is the easiest, and more importantly, the cheapest way to feed my addiction.

And today I bought eight more rollerball pens. Yes, eight. I was doing some shopping at Lidl, when I saw that they were selling these ballpoints, a set of four in a pack. There were two different kinds, a fine-tip one and a standard 0.7 mm one, they were pretty cheap (yet, really good quality), so I was like what the heck?, I hadn't bought a pen for at least a week, anyway.

So, I guess, even if I stopped buying new pens from now on, I don't  think I would run out of writing material in the next few years, I have so many rollerballs and fountain pen cartridges by now stacked up or lying around either at home or in the dorm.

Now that's what I call addiction.

Oh, by the way, do you remember that short story about the eraser we probably learnt in first or second grade in primary school, titled "The Magic Eraser" (A csodálatos radírgumi)? Whenever I see an eraser in a store, this story always pops into my head. If you don't remember, you can read it here.