Oh, the Places You've Been!

 You know that feature on Facebook that shows you things you've posted in prior years on today's date? I have a love-hate relationship with that thing, because sometimes it pops up with things that just gut me.

But other days it shows me things that definitely bring me a moment of joy.

Then there are days, like today, where it does both.

Many years ago, when I was a lawyer in private practice,* I was indirectly involved in a seriously awful criminal case. I won't go into the specifics, but a really young girl had to testify against her own father about things that many adults can't even bring themselves to mention.

She got into my heart, and one night when I was thinking about her and everything she had been through, this poem just came to me. I wrote it in exactly the amount of time it took to get the words down on paper. It is obviously inspired by a similarly titled work by Dr. Seuss, but is not intended in any way to infringe on his copyright. (If you are from Dr. Seuss' estate and thinking of suing me, I've been trying to get in touch with you for years about permission to publish this poem. Please write back!)

Anyway, I had thought of self-publishing this as a picture book, but companies were worried about lawsuits (those lousy lawyers!**). But before I found out it was going to be a problem, I had that little girl draw pictures to go with my text. So I turned it into a video with a slideshow of her drawings with me reading the poem. Here it is:



Have your heartstrings not been tugged enough yet? The picture of the little girl with the medal around her neck that says "life" is her imagining herself winning at life. 

*I always put quotation marks around "private practice" because I was really unemployed.

**I can make those jokes, because I am a lawyer. One with an inactive license, but still a lawyer.

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