sensitive. that killed me. that guy morrow was about as sensitive as a goddam toilet seat.

what really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

he started handling my exam paper like it was a turd or something. ” we studied the egyptians from november 4th to december 2nd,” he said. “you chose to write about them for the optional essay question. would you care to hear what you had to say?”

“no sir, not very much,” i said.

he read it anyway, though. you can’t stop a teacher when they want to do something. they just do it.

the egyptians were an ancient race of caucasians residing in one of the northern sections of africa. the latter as we all know is the largest continent in the eastern hemisphere.

i had to sit there and listen to that crap. it certainly was a dirty trick.

the egyptians are extremely interesting to us today for various reasons. modern science would still like to know what the secret ingredients were that the egyptians used when they wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for innumerable centuries. this interesting riddle is still quiet a challenge to modern science in the twentieth century.

he stopped reading and put my paper down. i was beginning to sort of hate him. “your essay, shall we say, ends there,” he said in this very sarcastic voice. you wouldn’t think such an old guy would be so sarcastic and all. “however you dropped me a little note, at the bottom of the page,” he said. 

“i knew i did,” i said. i said it very fast because i wanted to stop him before he started reading that out loud. but you couldn’t stop him. he was hot as a firecracker.

DEAR MR. SPENCER [he read out loud]. that is all i know about the egyptians. i can’t seem to get very interested in them although your lectures are very interesting. it is all right with me if you flunk me though as i am flunking everything else except english anyway. respectfully yours, H.C.

he put my goddam paper down then and looked at me like he’d just beaten hell out of me in ping-pong or something.

what i was really hanging around for, i was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. i mean i’ve left schools and places i didn’t even know i was leaving them. i hate that. i don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when i leave a place i like to know i’m leaving it. if you don’t, you feel even worse.

i know he’s dead! don’t you think i know that? i can still like him, though, can’t i? just because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop liking them, for god’s sake - especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that’re alive and all.

anyway, i keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around -nobody big, i mean- except me. and i’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. what i have to do, i have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - i mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going i have to come out from somewhere and catch them. that’s all i’d do all day. i’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. i know it’s crazy, but that”s the only thing i’d really like to be. i know it’s crazy.

don't ever tell anybody anything. if you do, you start missing everybody.