"If you really want to hear about it, the first you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

For the past couple weeks, I've been reacquainting myself with an old buddy: Holden Caufield. Every few years or so, I pick up the old red book with the yellow cover print that reads The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger. In that first sentence, the mood and attitude of a boy unlike and so much like any other boy is revealed. I can't tell you much I still learn from reading his tale of coming home after being kicked out yet another well-to-do private school just before Christmas.

"Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."

"Yes sir. I know it is. I know it."

Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right--I'll admit that. But what if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game.

Every time I think I'm starting to come around and blend into this crazy world, something reminds me that I'm still the same misfit kid I was fifteen years ago. Just when I think the women are turning on to my way of thinking, they pull the same slanted moves they did in the little cow town of my youth. The thing that's different as an adult is that the pool is bigger and smaller at the time. One minute the lady is in her mid-30s with some all-too-charming story of how she gets around the block, and the next minute, I'm sneaking a quick back rub on an almost eighteen year old. Or I'm explaining to the 21 year old girl downing multiple Diet Cokes that it's okay that I'm drinking a beer. Or cheering up the woman in her mid-20s that her life is all right. While the age range has gotten bigger and there's more fish in the sea and I meet more and more of them, I don't know any of them. I swear that. More than anything. Holden knows what I mean.

"That's the thing about girls. 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 you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can."

A buddy told me yesterday that cab driving is the most dangerous job in America, and all I could say is that it's the best job I ever had. What do you want to be? The question that's plagued me all my life, as if I could say doctor or lawyer or insurance salesman and everything would be okay. Taxes are due, and I have to tell the government my occupation. I made money last year as a cab driver, writer, actor, and musician. It's debatable how good I am at any of those jobs, but I got paid something for all of them. What do you want me say, Uncle Sam? What do you want to be, Holden?

"I keep picturing all these 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 all I want to be. I know it's crazy."

Holden's adventure lasted for three days. Mine has been going on for years. If I could explain it anywhere near the way J.D. describes next to nothing, maybe I would finally get over it. Or maybe I'd stay in the basement just like J.D. I try to go through life without creating too much of a disturbance, giving the polite how-do-you-do's and all to the people I meet, but there's still that Fuck You trigger that's ready to be pulled at any time. Christ, every time if you want it that way.

"It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck You' signs in the world. It's impossible."

The Catcher in the Rye has been banned all over our great country. Mostly for foul language that we don't want the children to read. Never mind that it's in movies and on the playground, we don't want them to read it. I'd put Salinger's stories and writing style up against any in the history of man, including those blessed by higher powers to write The Good Book, but never mind. Just never mind. Go back to your Internet searches, Reality TV, and Wal-Mart shopping sprees. It's just a story. One of the best I've ever read, again and again. The catcher caught me a while back, but for some reason, I'm still that kid playing too near the crazy cliff, hoping Holden will catch me again. Maybe that's what I want to be. What do you think about that?

"If you want to know the truth, I don't know what I think about it. I'm sorry I told so many people about it. About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about...it's funny. Don't ever tell anyone anything. If you do you'll start missing everybody."

Chris Jungle is a hack on many levels.