"Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."

This is a quote from one of my favorite books, The Catcher in the Rye. The book's author, J.D. Salinger, died yesterday in New Hampshire. I did not read it until my final year at ISU. I had a chance to take an upper division English Lit. class and this book was required. Aside from some Judy Blume book I read as a teenager, Catcher was one of the most daring books I had ever seen. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about all the subversive things that Holden Caulfield claimed to do. Finding out it had been on many a banned book list made it even more intriguing.

I cannot claim to have done much of anything that did not follow the "rules." I was well into adulthood and engaged to marry Eric when I probably did the most unlikely thing anyone in my family would have ever imagined I'd do. I found an apartment about 5 months before our wedding date and when Eric completed his semester, he moved in with me. I guess I finally gave them something to talk about at the family reunion!

Anyway, years later, when we were thinking about names for our first child, I suggested "Holden." We already had a name picked out for a girl. The boy names were harder for us. Eric wanted to use Hunter as a middle name. I really liked the sound of "Holden Hunter Hilburn." It had so many possibilities! Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Holden Hunter Hilburn--why not? Thankfully, my mother had the good sense to talk me out of it. (She had had her own brush with a nearly misnamed child--me. I very well could have been named Robin, but then I was born with all that red hair. Could you imagine the nicknaming fun--"Red Robin," "Little Robin Redbreast") We settled on Ethan, and well, we had two girls.

Thank you for allowing me this little indulgence today. Here's hoping that Salinger is now at peace and able to roam around a bit more in death than he did in life!

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though." J.D. Salinger