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If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my military childhood was like, and how my parents were stationed in different countries from me, and all that military brat kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth... I'm not going to tell you my whole life or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around freshman year of high school just before I got pretty run-down and had to start reading books to take it easy and not think about life so much.
I had people telling me all the time in high school, telling me how when they were in college it was the happiest days of their lives, and giving me a lot of advice for the future and all. Boy, did they depress me! I don't mean any of them were bad people or anything. They weren't. But you don't have to be a bad guy to depress somebody - you can be a good guy and do it. All you have to do to depress somebody is give them a lot of phony advice about the future while you're working your boring jobs that weren't your dream jobs. That's all you have to do. I don't know. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad listening to them if they didn't look so sad. They all look so sad when they think people aren't looking. The whole time they put on a good show, tell you everything is good and all, that the world is at your door step or something. I can't explain. I just didn't like anything that people were telling me.
"You don't like anything that's happening." It made me even more depressed when I thought about that.
"Yes I do. Yes I do. Sure I do. Don't say that." Why did you say that to me? Of course I like some things...
I couldn't concentrate too much. Sometimes it's hard to concentrate. When people ask you about the future and what you'd do and all, I got all lost in the head. All I could think about then was about some boy I read about for a school assignment. Old Holden Caulfield or something. Nobody liked him. He swore and called everyone phony and all. His sister asked him to name something he'd like to be and he couldn't answer straight. Kept saying things he couldn't be and all:
"I couldn't be a scientist. I'm no good in science." I'm not all that good at math or engineering or government positions either.
"Lawyers are all right, I guess - but it doesn't appeal to me." Teachers help a lot of people, but that doesn't interest me.
He said if he could be anybody he'd be the catcher in the rye. He said he'd picture all these kids in a big field of rye and all, nobody big around except him, and he'd stand on the edge and catch them before they fell off or something. The whole idea came because he misquoted a poem by Robert Burns.
O, Jenny's a' weet [wet] poor body,
Jenny's seldom dry:
She draigl't [dragged] a' her petticoatie,
Comin thro' the rye!
Chorus:
Comin thro' the rye, poor body,
Comin thro' the rye,
She draigl't a' her petticoatie,
Comin thro' the rye!
Gin [if] a body meet a body
Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need a body cry [call out for help]?
(chorus)
Gin a body meet a body
Comin thro' the glen
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need the warl' [world] ken [know]?
(chorus)
Gin a body meet a body
Comin thro' the grain;
Gin a body kiss a body,
The thing's a body's ain [own].
(chorus)
Ilka lassie has her laddie,
Nane, they say, ha’e I
Yet all the lads they smile on me,
When comin' thro' the rye.
I remember thinking that kid was just a kid. That Holden boy took a song about sexual imagery and changed it to be about saving little kids. He didn't know anything. Nobody knows anything about anything. He was just a kid too and he didn't even know it.
He said that's what he'd do all day if he could, saving kids' lives from a metaphorical cliff. I guess I kind of want that too. If my stories could be something like that, pulling people from that cliff with just the words I put together that's what I'd do all day...I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.
That's all I'm going to tell about. I could probably tell you what I did after I thought about how Holden and I are both just kids still, no matter how much we went through or how much we pretended to be grown up, and how I got so emotional over a fictional guy and all, and how I picked myself up from that crazy moment but never forgot how I felt, but I don't feel like it. I really don't. That stuff is left for someone else to pick up on if they can understand it too.
A lot of people, especially my parents, keep asking me if I'm going to apply myself and get a real job when I finish college and all. It's such a loaded question, in my opinion. I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't really know. I think I'm gonna do what I want to do. But that's an answer you don't tell anybody. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start disappointing everybody.
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