Changing Chapter Two of Catcher in the Rye - Ho Yoon Jung

Changing Chapter Two of Catcher in the Rye

Ho Yoon Jung

I stood on the front of Mr. Kim’s office door. He is about forty years old. He has some kind of a long, cucumber shaped like head with little hair on top of his head. He teaches a useless subject called Physics, although he is very passionate about his subject. Come to think of it, he is not only just passionate about his subject. He is overly passionate about everything. He is famous for nosing into every possible incident. He is not the most popular teachers in the school. In fact, he is one of the least popular teachers in school. But, he has some weird kind of illusion that students like the way that he is acting. Even though I don’t like him, I somewhat feel pity for him, sometimes.

Anyway I knocked the door three times, to look kind of polite, and entered his office. He was sitting on a chair with his back pointing the door. I could see his cucumber like back of his head. His back stilled turned, he said in a somewhat solemn way “Who’s that? Is it Caulfield?” I hated the way he tried to act so dignified but answered politely. “Yes sir. You told me to visit your office today.” He turned his chair and faced me. With that same affected voice he said “Yes I did. Take a sit over there.” I sat. “You know the reason I called you?” Mr. Kim said. “Yes sir. I think so.” I said. Damn, this chair was to stiff as hell.

“As you know, I called you because of your yellow hair.” Mr. Kim said. “I know sir.” Some phony teachers in my school can’t stand my yellow hair. I don’t understand why the hell they care about my hair color. “Do you want to be expelled from school?” Mr. Kim said. Here comes that same old expelling threatening tactic again. I don’t care if I get expelled from this school or not, actually I would prefer leaving this school. But I answered, “no, sir.” “How many penalty points did you get till now?” he said. “Forty points, sir.” I said. “You realize that you will get expelled from school when you reach 60 points and do you realize that it has only been a month that the semester started?” he said. Shit, I know this whole crap about penalty points. I frequently use the word shit, because the whole world is full of it.  “Yes I know that sir.” I said.

Mr. Kim maybe became satisfied about his speech or was satisfied with my kind of polite attitude. But whatever the reason is, he began to gain that useless passion that I talked about. He maybe thought that he could change me into a well-behaving kid or something. He started nagging about millions of things. “Do your parents know about this? What did the student guidance counselor say to you? Isn’t school rules set to be obeyed?” On and on and on he went. Overwhelmed by his own speech. I couldn’t stand this false-dignified, affectation no longer. It made me feel like vomiting. “Sorry to interrupt you teacher, but I have a class in five minutes.” I said. Mr. Kim’s exiled face expression got removed from his face. “Okay. I hope you got my point. I wish you will act with some sense.” I knew that Mr. Kim really meant it. But I couldn’t just accept his thoughts. We were just totally different. I bowed to Mr. Kim and ran out of that office.