"Ask her if she still keeps her kings in the back row..."

The Catcher in the Rye - My intention was only to flip through the pages to find those passages I'd "saved for later." But which copy to pull off the shelf? No, I'm not one of those sleeper assassins or even a hoarder. It's that my first copy, my beloved, underlined, and cherished copy was stolen. Not specifically or intentionally stolen, but stolen none-the-less.

It was my first year teaching and I naively left my school bag (hardcopy grade book, lesson plans, and a semester's worth of student work) in my car. And someone, stole it all. The bag, the coins in the console, my favorite sunglasses. All of it. And in that bag, was my copy of The Catcher in the Rye. I'd read it my freshman year in college - not for a class, but because I hadn't read it in high school and wondered what I was missing out on. And I fell in love. The arrogant, condescending, first person narrative hating all of the phonies in the world echoed my sophomoric English-major soul. I read it twice that year. And later, in my first year teaching, I knew exactly which book I wanted to awaken my students to.

And they loved it. Or at least they faked it well. Sitting in wrapped silence whenever I read it aloud, either completely enthralled or just waiting for their teacher to say bastard, ass, or worse...

And now, that copy was gone.

I was devastated. So, my father, trying to cheer me up decided to buy my a copy whenever he came across one at a used book store, tag sale (garage or yard sale for anyone not from Western Mass or CT), or consignment shop. And then I started doing the same - hoping that maybe someone else would have cherished it in the same way - underlining and dog-earing the same passages. After about 8 copies, my wife told me I was teetering on the edge of compulsive. So I stopped collecting them.

But I can rarely go into a used book shop without picking one up if I find one. Thumbing through the pages, looking for a kindred spirit, hating phonies, missing Phoebe, and wondering if Jane Gallagher still keeps her kings in the back row.