"Do you feel absolutely no concern for your future, boy?"
            "Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure. Sure, I do." I thought about
it for a minute. "But not too much, I guess. Not too much, I guess."
            "You will," old Spencer said. "You will, boy. You will when it's too late."
            I didn't like hearing him say that. It made me sound dead or something. It was very depressing. "I guess I will," I said.
            "I'd like to put some sense in that head of yours, boy. I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to help you, if I can."
            He really was, too. You could see that. But it was just that we were too much on opposite sides of the pole, that's all. "I know you are, sir," I said. "Thanks a lot. No kidding. I appreciate it. I really do." I got up from the bed then. Boy, I couldnt've sat there anotehr ten minutes to save my life. "The thing is, though, I have to get going now. I have quite a bit of equipment at the gym I have to get tk take home with me. I really do." He looked up at me and started nodding again, with this very serious look on his face. I felt sorry as hell for him, all of a sudden. But I just couldn't hang around there any longer, the way we were on opposite sides of the pole, and the way he kept missing the bed whenever he chucked something at it, and his sad old bathrobe with his chest showing, and that grippy smell of Vicks Nose Drops all over the place. "Look, sir. Don't worry about me," I said. "I mean it. I'll be all right. I'm just going though a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?"
            "I don't know, boy. I don't know."
            I hate it when somebody answers that way. "Sure. Sure, they do," I said. "I mean it, sir. Please don't worry about me." I sort of put my hand on his shoulder. "Okay?" I said.

            ~ from: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger ~