She was a very nice, polite little kid. God, I love it when a kid's nice and polite when you tighten their skate for them or something. Most kids are. They really are.
So Holden helps out this kid and she's thanking him and he tells us how much he loves it when a kid's nice to him. I just found this interesting, and I definitely feel the same way when kids are nice and polite. I think it has something to do with the honesty, you know? It just seems like they really are grateful. You get these teenagers, even adults, they thank you for helping them move something or getting something off the top shelf for them or whatever and it just feels like they're only thanking you because they feel obligated to. But when a kid does it it's more like, wow. Good kid. It doesn't technically make much sense because it's probably the parent drilling it into the kid that they should thank people, but it feels nice and it feels like you really helped em out.
I think this shows that Holden really can appreciate honesty when he sees it, and that when a person's alright, he knows they're alright. He only criticizes when there's room to criticize.
Nice quote! It's true, I feel the same way about kids, there's just some sort of innocence inside of a kid that you don't find in teenagers and adults. Anyway, I think Holden sees his sister in the little girl, and we all know his sister is his soft spot, so there might be a little bit of bias in Holden's judgement of the girl. But, seeing as all the people he's called phony seem to end up being phony (Example: Sally Hayes), it shows that Holden does have a pretty accurate judge of character.
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