I’ve been trying to remember what it felt like being 15 or 16 years old. A few images have come through, and some of those aren’t too bad, but many of the rest make me cringe.

Those images that make me cringe now should have made me cringe then, but didn’t. It’s the how and why of that “didn’t” I’m trying to reconnect with: that cringe-defiant attitude of invincibility — the unflinching confidence of a 16-year-old boy.

I was having limited success until I revisited J.D. Salinger’s classic novel, “The Catcher in the Rye”. Holden Caulfield is the main character in a book whose narrative is composed primarily of his stream of consciousness.

A consciousness containing a repertoire not so different from an adult’s, differing only in the degree of caution born of experience. In this case, the repertoire comes with a bonus — a 16-year old’s perspective on being 70 years of age.

Here’s how Holden Caulfield describes a couple of his teachers, one of whom is “Old Spencer”:

“They each had their own room and all. They were both around 70 years old — even more than that. They got a bang out of things though — in a half-assed way, of course …

“For instance, one time, old Spencer showed us this beat-up Navajo blanket that he and Mrs. Spencer bought off some Indians in Yellowstone Park. You could tell old Spencer got a big bang out of buying it. That’s what I mean. You take somebody old as hell, like old Spencer, and they get a big bang out of buying a blanket.”

My wife and I are in our 70s. She recently purchased a new footstool — a Pouf — it’s puffy and yellow. We both like it quite a lot. It’s the right size, and its brightness brings a note of winter relief.

Both my wife and I get a big bang out of our new footstool.

So, it seems, young Caulfield has a point.

I first read “The Catcher in the Rye” when I was 15 or 16. It wasn’t banned, but it was not a book you discussed with your folks. In fact, you didn’t want them knowing you were reading it. But it was a cool read.

Holden was a cynic. You catch some of that in his description of Old Spencer. As with many things cynical, there are elements of truth, and so it is with Holden’s view of the adult world and the phoniness he perceives to be so rampant there.

After flunking out of four private schools, failing to sustain any meaningful social connections or affairs of the heart, and being unreceptive to wearisome advice from adult mentors, Holden receives a revelation — a vision of what he would like to become:

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all — 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 don’t look where they’re going, I have to come from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just like to be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”

Isn’t that just the way it goes? Some guy or gal whose talent is unappreciated comes along to lead the way. Steve Jobs was fired from Apple. Katherine Johnson couldn’t use the white folks’ restroom. Later, John Glenn refused to fly unless Johnson checked the math.

So who should come along in our hour of need when some of our leaders would shepherd us off a cliff into an abyss of balderdash, conspiratorial gibberish, and violence?

Young Holden Caulfield.

And just in time — right when we need him, him and our young poet, Amanda Gorman, that skinny Black girl descended from slaves.

We need them both, catchers — in our field of rye.

Doug Pugh’s “Vignettes” runs weekly on Saturdays. He can be reached at pughda@gmail.com.