The Catcher in the Rye Journal Personal responses to the text

was about six years old I fell down the stairs and landed face first on the cement floor in our basement. I knock out one of my front teeth but I didn’t feel any pain. When I went back up stairs I looked in the mirror and I had blood all over me. It was nasty looking. Chapter 7“It was pretty dark, and I stepped on somebody’s shoe on the floor and damn near fell on my head.”Pg. 46Waking up in the morning my house is really dark because I’m the first one that gets up in the morning. I didn’t know my dog was sleeping on the floor right in front of my bed so when I got up I tripped over her and almost fell right into the door. “A couple of minutes later, he was snoring like mad.”Pg. 49That sounds just like my dad. He gets home at four in the morning and as soon as he’s in bed I can hear him snore like crazy. It’s actually kind of funny.“You bastard, did you wake me just to ask me a dumb ques”pg. 50I hate when people wake me up when I’m really tired just to ask me some stupid question that they could have asked me when I woke up. That gets me so ticked it’s not even funny.Chapter 8“It wasn’t too cold far, but it was cold as hell, and the snow made it hard for walking…”pg. 53This is just how it was when I first moved here. There was a snowstorm and when I had to walk to the bus stop it was so hard to walk due to there being so much snow. It was nice because I never saw that much snow in my entire life but then again it was a pain.  “She looked like she might have a pretty damn good idea what a bastard she was the mother of. But you can’t always tell-with somebody’s mother, I mean. Mothers are all slightly insane.”Pg. 55Sounds like a lot of mothers I’ve met in my life. When you tell them that their kid has done something wrong they always deny it and then say that their kid wouldn’t do anything like that. You get a feeling though that they know exactly what their kid is like and that they did do it. Mothers often seem to protect their children in the wrong situations sometimes. “That’s the one fault with him-he’s too shy and modest. You really oughta get him to try to relax occasionally.”Pg. 57I used to be like that about three years ago. People always had to make me do things even if I really didn’t want to. Sometimes I didn’t even do things I wanted to do because I was too shy. That also made it hard for me to make new friends…until I loosened up. Chapter 9“I felt like giving someone a buzz…but as soon as I was inside, I couldn’t think of anybody to call up.”Pg. 59This happens to me a lot. There are times where I really want to talk to somebody so I grab the phone but then when I think about it I don’t know who to call. I can sit there for quite a while debating who to call.“They gave me this very crumby room, with nothing to look out of the window at except the other side of the hotel.”Pg. 61When I went to Florida this summer we had to stay in a hotel over night because we drove down there. Well, the hotel was not really that great and the room dark and moist. Kind of like a storage room. It was nasty. This reminded me of the moment I walked into that hotel room.“Sex is something I just don’t understand. I swear to God I don’t.”pg. 63This is funny. I almost said the exact same thing in my health class in seventh grade. I was just joking in a way I guess. But yeah I just thought this was really funny. Chapter 10“The one thing I hate to do is go to bed when I’m not even tired.”Pg. 66My mom always tells me to go to bed at like let’s say around nine p.m. and even when I’m not tired I have to go. So I lay in bed tossing and turning, looking at the ceiling; unable to fall asleep. I hate that sometimes.“The only trouble is, she’s a little too affectionate sometimes.”Pg. 68This sounds just like me. When I really like or care about someone I get way to affectionate and just a little too attached. I don’t know why. It’s the same with my boyfriend Sean right now. I’m attached to him way too much. “Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.”Pg. 73When I notice that a guy is really sweet and has a nice personality then I get a little attracted to him, even if he’s not that great looking. For me it counts more on the personality then looks.  Chapter 11“You don’t always have to get too sexy to get to know a girl.”Pg. 76I wish that some guys would understand this as much as Holden does. It can get pretty annoying when a guy is trying so hard to win the girls heart by being as sexy as possible. “My mother didn’t really like her too much. I mean my mother always thought Jane and her mother were sort of snubbing her or something when they didn’t say hello.”Pg. 77When I went out with this kid over the summer he never said hello to my parents once. My parents didn’t like him because he seemed to be really rude and stuff so they told me that I wasn’t allowed to see him anymore. Now I’m glad because as it turned out he was a real big jerk in the first place. “I don’t even like to talk about it if you want to know the truth.”Pg. 80There are some things people just don’t like to talk about and there are a lot of things that happened in my life that I don’t like to talk or even think about. Chapter 12“It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed. I kept wishing I could go home and shoot the bull for a while with old Phoebe.”Pg. 81I miss my sister a lot because she lives all the way overseas. I sometimes wish I could go back there and play with her kids and talk to her about problems I have. “I stopped having a conversation with him, if he was going to get so damn touchy about it.” Pg. 82I don’t like when I am having a conversation about something and they get all serious about it even when they know I’m only joking around so I stop talking to them until they loosened up.“She was blocking up the whole goddamn traffic in the aisle.”Pg. 87Sometimes when I drive some people take up two lanes and so there is no way you can pass them. That gets me so mad especially also when it comes to parking. I guess some people don’t know how to drive or park correctly.Chapter 13“You wouldn’t even have known that it had snowed at all. There was hardly ant snow on the sidewalks.”Pg. 89This reminds me of how the winters were in Germany. We barely had any snow on the ground and when we did it was only there for about maybe a day. It was nicer compared to here, not as much snow shoveling to do. “It could go on like that for hours.”Pg. 89When I fight with some one I can come up with so many arguments that the fight could go on forever. This quote reminded me of that. I like to argue sometimes. Especially when I know that I’m right. “I can drink all night and not even show it, if I’m in the mood.”Pg. 90My cousin is like that. She can drink all night long and you would never notice that she was drunk. It is pretty funny sometimes. Chapter 14“Boy, I felt miserable. I felt so depressed, you can’t imagine.” Pg. 99There are days when I feel depressed and miserable too. It doesn’t happen often but when it does I just want to stay at home in my bad and not do anything besides crawl up into a ball and sleep.“I cant always pray when I feel like it”pg. 98That happens to me sometimes too. I want to pray but then I just can seem to do it. I don’t know why but it happens occasionally. “The goddamn movies. They can ruin you. I’m not kidding.”Pg. 104So true. Some kids get influenced by movies to do drugs. One of my dad’s cousins started to smoke because she saw it in a movie and she thought it was cool to be like the actors. Movies can really ruin you. Chapter 15“So I just laid around in bed for a while and smoked another cigarette.”Pg. 105I used to do that on the weekends when my parents were at work. I stopped that though. Now I go to work in the mornings on the weekends so that gives me something to do.“I spent a king’s ransom in about two lousy weeks.”Pg. 107I spend a lot of money when I go shopping in the mall sometimes and then I have to pay my parents back when I get my paycheck. I sometimes spend so much money on clothes that it takes two of my paychecks, it stinks. But I can’t help it.“Then we both asked to be moved. And the funny thing was, I sort of missed him after we moved, because he had a helluva good sense of humor and we had a lot of fun sometimes.”Pg. 109I used to share a room with my sister when she had moved in with us for a while before she could move into her own apartment. Well, we had fights and stuff, but when she moved out I really missed her like crazy, because no matter how many times we fought we had a great time together and I missed that more than ever when she moved so I can understand how Holden must have felt.Chapter 16“My aunt is pretty charitable-she does a lot of Red Cross work and all…”pg. 114My aunt is the same way. She used to work for Red Cross until her husband passed away two years ago. Then she stopped. She did anything really to help others. She was a very generous woman and I really respect her for that.“I can understand somebody going to the movies because there is nothing else to do, but when somebody really wants to go…”pg. 116When I am really bored then I might go to the movies but I never want to go there. I think that it’s more a waste of money since the movies will come on TV sometime it makes no sense to go to the movies. “It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn’t, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world.”Pg. 120This really reminds me of my aunts’ old apartment back in Germany. It always smelled wet in there. Like rain. It was nice and comfortable and the smell gave the apartment an old kind of atmosphere but in a good way. Chapter 17“In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them. When they got gout of school and college, I mean.”Pg. 123I wonder about myself and what will happen to me after high school and collage. I mean where will my life go? I don’t really know that yet. I just hope I will be able to pursue my dreams and go somewhere in life when I’m older.  “We horsed around a little bit in the cab on the way over to the theater.”Pg. 125My friends and I horsed around in a limo once on the way to a dance. It was fun and all but also very immature. It was in Freshmen year and I guess we really didn’t know better because we were so supped. “If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don’t watch it, you start showing off.”Pg. 126A lot of people are like that. If they know that they are really good at something they start to show it off to everyone. My nephew is like that. He was really good in math while all his other classmates had trouble keeping up with the work. He joined a math league and won an entire competition all by himself. All his friends started pulling away from him because he became arrogant and snotty. That happens sometimes when you become to full of yourself.  Chapter 18“All muscle and no brains.”Pg. 135Sounds like a kid I used to hang out with. He thought he was so cool and so hot just because he had a lot of muscle but when it came to his brain it was probably smaller then a pea. He couldn’t even figure out what twenty minus thirteen was. It was really sad. “…my address book only has about three people in it…I keep forgetting to put people’s names in.”pg. 136I do that a lot. When I get someone’s number it can take me a while to put it into my address book or my cell phone. Then when I need their number I don’t have it on me. So now I learned to put all numbers in my cell just in case I might need them sometime. “…while I walked I sort of thought about war and all…, but you have to stay in the Army so goddamn long. That’s the whole trouble. My brother D.B. was in the Army for four goddamn years.”Pg. 140I sometimes had thoughts about joining the army after high school, but I don’t think I was made for it. My boyfriend is going in the army next year in June. Well, it’s boot camp and he’ll be there for a month. After that he is committed to the army for at least four years. That is a long time. With the wars going on these days going into the military is like committing suicide, that’s what I think.Chapter 19“It was a terrible place, I’m not kidding. I cut out going there entirely, gradually.”Pg. 142When I don’t like a place and I know it’s no good after I’ve been there once and have seen how it is I don’t go there anymore. For me I would say it was my first and last time going there. Like a restaurant I went to. It was horrible, the food was more than disgusting and the people there were really unfriendly and all. So I never when there again.“I’ve known quite a few real flits, at schools and all, and they’re always doing stuff like that, and that’s why I always had my doubts about old Luce.”Pg. 143To be honest I know some at our school too. And some of them aren’t even bad people. They are just like everyone else and some of them make better friends than straight people. Like my friend Matt. He is one of my best friends and I love to go shopping with him, he just gives the best shopping advice ever. “The reason I was asking was because he really knew quite a bit about sex and all.”Pg. 145Whenever I have a question about sex or something I never go to my friends or my parents. I always go to my sister. I know that I can trust her more than anyone else in this world and since she was my age too once she would understand and stuff. I used to ask her stuff when I was like eleven when puberty first started. I was to ashamed of talking to my mom about it and everyone knows that you can’t ask your dad about stuff like that.Chapter 20“People never give your message to anybody.”Pg. 149When you tell some one to tell somebody else something they never do you that favor. Once I asked my friend to tell my teacher I’ll be a little late to class so that he wouldn’t mark me absent. She never told him so when I came to class about ten minutes late with a pass he had marked me absent and wrote out a cut slip which he gave to the VP. That got me really mad. “I damn near cried, it made me feel so terrible, but all I did was, I took the pieces out of the envelope and put them in my coat pocket.’Pg. 154Once when I was younger I broke my grandmas’ favorite vase. I cried because I felt so horrible about me breaking the vase knowing that my gram loved it. I hid it from her under the couch but she found it the next day by cleaning and when I went over she asked me how her favorite vase ended up under the couch in a million pieces. I told her and she forgave me with a big warm smile on her face. I felt so much better knowing she wasn’t mad at me.“When the weather is nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie’s grave.”Pg. 155My parents go out when it’s nice out to visit my grandma’s grave to put some flowers and a nice picture on her grave. I like to go with them because I loved my gram and I like her grave to be always nice and clean and I think she know how much we care about her, still even now that she’s dead. Chapter 21“All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.”Pg. 158I lied to a guy at the movie theaters once. I told him that I forgot my bag in the bathroom near the doors where you can go into the theaters and so he let me pass. I didn’t go into the bathroom; I went to watch another movie. This was two years ago though, I don’t do that anymore. “But my parents, especially my mother, she has ears like a goddamn bloodhound.”Pg. 158Once I came home an hour late and I thought my mom was sleeping because there was no TV on and nothing, no sound what so ever. So once I was in my room and had the door closed I started to relax thinking I got away with coming home late. Well, like two minutes after my mom comes into my room asking me why I came home so late. She heard me coming home. I was so quite I never would have thought she heard me. She has very good hearing. “Sometimes she’s even too affectionate.”Pg. 161When I really like someone or really care about them then I can get very affectionate and sometimes it can take overhand it can get annoying. I am very affectionate towards my family and my boyfriend and some of my close, very good friends. Chapter 22“She sounds like a goddamn schoolteacher sometimes, and she’s only a little child.”Pg. 167My nephew Marco is only nine years old but he is so smart. When he knows that I am doing something I’m not supposed to , or he knows I’m not doing to great in school he almost sounds like my mom or one of my teachers. It is sort of funny but it can get pretty aggravating sometimes, I mean hearing stuff like that from a nine year old. I can’t wait for him to be in High School, and then we’ll see how he’ll do. “You don’t like anything that’s happening.”Pg. 169There are days where I really can’t stand anything and I hate life. But then when I think about all the good times I had and all the great people that are in my life that stand behind me and catch me when I fall I change my mind and think how wonderful life can be. “But the trouble was, I couldn’t concentrate.”Pg. 170During the PSAT’s I could not concentrate. Three were so many things going on in my mind it was hard to focus just on the test alone. Things at home, drama with friends and then the whole trouble I got in with my VP lying to my parents about things, getting me in trouble for no reason. I just hope that I didn’t do badly on it. Chapter 23“He was about the best teacher I ever had, Mr. Antolini. He was a pretty young guy, not much older than my brother D.B., and you could kid around with him without losing your respect for him.”Pg. 174In my Freshmen year my math teacher and I got along very well. He was my most favorite teacher ever. He always made class fun and still educational. He fooled around making jokes and telling stories and stuff. He was the best math teacher I’ve ever met. “Then I fanned hell out of the air, to get the smoke out-I shouldn’t even have been smoking, for God’s sake.”Pg. 176Last year my parents went to a Christmas party and my mom forgot her cigarettes at home. Well, I had a friend stay with me because I didn’t want to be alone. We figured that it wouldn’t hurt to try it. So we took a cigarette each and went back to my room and started smoking. After two drags we heard some one coming into the front door, of course it was my parents. We opened up all the windows, took out the air freshener and started spraying hoping the smell would fade away before they came in to check on us. That was so scary.“She gets headaches quite frequently. She really does.”Pg. 178My mom always gets headaches a lot. She blames it on her being frustrated when I don’t listen or she blames it on the lights at work. I don’t really know what she gets headaches from but when she has them she is usually in a very bad mood, and so I always leave her alone and never ask her for anything.   Chapter 24“You were always yelling when you were there. That’s because the both never were in the same room at the same time.”Pg. 182My parents are barely in the same room at the same time unless when they go to bad at night. Usually I have to yell for one of them because one is in the living room and the other one is in the bedroom. It gets pretty annoying to yell most of the time. So I always go to the room one or the other is in and talk to them so that I don’t have to yell out of the top of my lungs.“I like somebody to stick to the point and all. But I don’t like them to stick too much to the point.”Pg. 183I like to stick to the point most of the time but when you talk to some one who really always sticks to the point of something then it can get pretty annoying. You can drift away from the point at least a little and not always stick to it. That’s how I see it. I don’t know. “I hate them once in a while- I admit it-but it doesn’t last too long, is what I mean.”Pg. 187There are times when I hate somebody, but I can only hate them for a little while. Like my non-related cousin. I hate her once in a while, like when she starts spreading nasty rumors or getting her friends to hate me by telling lies; but most of the time I only dislike her a lot. Hate is such a strong word and for me hate isn’t a lasting feeling. It can last for maybe a day with me but I just can’t keep on hating a person. Chapter 25“And I think I was more depressed than I ever was in my whole life.”Pg. 194When my friend Lana died of breast cancer 4 years ago I felt like nothing was worth living. I was so depressed I just sat around at home starring at the empty walls, and when I was in school I never smiled. I only did my work and went back home. I never hung out with my other friends, nothing. No one ever saw me so depressed. “It sort of looked like it was going to rain, but I went for this walk anyway.”Pg. 196Sometimes when I really need time to think or something I like to go for walks. Even when it’s raining or snowing outside. I like to go on walks. They relax me and clear my mind. “Then she ran right the hell across the street, without even looking to see if any cars were coming.”Pg. 208I only did that once in my entire life. My sister and I were fighting and when I had enough I ran straight across the street. It was a main street too so there was usually a lot of traffic. I didn’t care though because I was so mad all I wanted to do was get away from her. I was scared and so was she so once I was on the other side she asked me if I was stupid so when she sad that I just kept on running until she ran after me saying sorry. Chapter 26“I mean how do you know what you’re going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don’t.”pg. 213I don’t know what I am going to do until I do it. I don’t always plan ahead, sometimes I just let things happen the way I think they were meant to happen. It’s complicated to explain in a way. You just can’t always know what you’re going to do if you’re unsure I guess. “About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about.”Pg. 214All my old friends from Germany, I miss them like crazy. I haven’t seen any of them in over three years. I only keep in contact with one of my many old friends. It makes me sad. Some of them moved in this time and I have no way of contacting them. It makes me sad that I moved away without saying good-bye and then not staying in contact with them. “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you star missing everybody.”Pg. 214If you tell people something about you or your life or anything else they can use it against you and make your life miserable by having a lot of dirt on you. Not only that but when you bring up something about your past you can end up missing so much about your life and how it used to be you can become very depressed and sad. Missing some one can hurt more than anything else in this world.