5/24/2014

Catcher in the PQRye

I love my apartment. I love the balcony view of the swimming pool. I love the mallards swimming and barn swallows swooping. It's early still, so the shrieks and whoops of supervised kids are jolly! The pool is open.

I can still chuckle about the little boy whispering to his mother. She gestures him to the tall trash can. He pees behind the trash can, then jumps back into the pool.

It has been a week of bodily fluids at school. Poop. Pee. Barf. Rinse. Repeat. And now I worry about the summer ahead. Pool kids with less supervision. Kids playing Marco Polo. The pool out my rear window. Jimmy Stewart and I, just immobilized impotent lifeguards watching. Thank heaven there's no high dive.



"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 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.” 
― J.D. SalingerThe Catcher in the Rye



© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder

3 comments:

seana graham said...

I don't know if you happened to see this on Slate when it was posted last year, but they've put it up again as the summer swim season looms. It's called Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning. A good thing to know for anyone who lives near a body of water, I'd think. And for everyone else, too.

Collagemama said...

Seana, that is an excellent link. Thank you so much. And I would just add that choking also doesn't look or sound like in the movies.

seana graham said...

Thanks for the detecting choking idea too. I will have to look that up.