The catcher in the rye vocabulary
The funny part is, I felt like marrying her the minute I saw her. She hardly ever wore a hat, but that beret looked nice. She had on this black coat and sort of a black beret. Finally, old Sally started coming up the stairs, and I started down to meet her. They don't hurt anybody, most of them, and maybe they're secretly all terrific whistlers or something. Maybe you shouldn't feel too sorry if you see some swell girl getting married to them. I mean you don't just go up to somebody and say, "You're a terrific whistler." But I roomed with him for about two whole months, even though he bored me till I was half crazy, just because he was such a terrific whistler, the best I ever heard. Naturally, I never told him I thought he was a terrific whistler. He could take something very jazzy, like "Tin Roof Blues," and whistle it so nice and easy-right while he was hanging stuff up in the closet-that it could kill you. He could even whistle classical stuff, but most of the time he just whistled jazz. He'd be making his bed, or hanging up stuff in the closet-he was always hanging up stuff in the closet-it drove me crazy-and he'd be whistling while he did it, if he wasn't talking in this raspy voice. The sonuvabitch could whistle better than anybody I ever heard. He never stopped talking, and what was awful was, he never said anything you wanted to hear in the first place. He had one of these very raspy voices, and he never stopped talking, practically. He was very intelligent and all, but he was one of the biggest bores I ever met. When I was at Elkton Hills, I roomed for about two months with this boy, Harris Mackim. Guys that are very boring-But I have to be careful about that. Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf, or even just some stupid game like ping-pong. Guys that always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars. You figured most of them would probably marry dopey guys. When they got out of school and college, I mean. In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them. It was really nice sightseeing, if you know what I mean. Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their legs not crossed, girls with terrific legs, girls with lousy legs, girls that looked like swell girls, girls that looked like they'd be bitches if you knew them. A lot of schools were home for vacation already, and there were about a million girls sitting and standing around waiting for their dates to show up. 17 I was way early when I got there, so I just sat down on one of those leather couches right near the clock in the lobby and watched the girls.