Holden Looks Back

It happens when you’re debilitated, laid-up, sick; random images, memories coalesce within the unoccupied reason of your mind. Maybe you have a memory, standing on a hill, chilled, watching the final high school football game of the season. Maybe you are a fictional character writing about mixed emotions: your youth transcending societal doubt. You could be a real person fictionalizing a pubescent experience upon a million future pages describing insecurity at a time of social transition. Agerstown Pennsylvania wasn’t a bad place to live, but Pencey was a haven of unforgiving classmates. Absent mindedness was no excuse and a lack of self-discipline was grounds for expulsion. The History instructor was an engaging and affable fellow, like instructors are. He was concerned about you, that instructor that spoke with you and was aware of the student unable to apply his self in the presence of teenage shenanigans and impulsive drama. It seems you were a victim or a misapprehension of circumstance. The lack of women at Pencey Prep School was obvious. The slovenly plain and fidgeting daughter of the headmaster drew your eye. A growing libido and an ailing fantasy life is no way to grow up. And while such things make for an interesting read, they are thin of poetry, romance, and sexual deeds. Upon the hill pondering flashes of memory, physical youth seems pleasurable compared to a bleak, unknowable future. Some good-byes are worth waiting for, some are not. We always seem to remember bad good-byes. It is remembering what could-have-been that keeps us recounting such random and undesired images.