Pollyanna

"My favourite book of all when I was growing up was Pollyanna . Pollyanna was the daughter of a missionary – she had only one parent, her dad. She was very poor and she used to get things out of a missionary barrel. She wanted a doll but instead she got a pair of crutches and she started to cry. Her father said, “Let’s play a glad game”. She said, “There’s nothing glad about crutches”. He said, “Sure there is, you can be glad you don’t need them”. Then her father died and she went to live with a very rich aunt, who didn’t like her. There was a carnival going on and Pollyanna snuck out the back window. When she was sneaking back in she fell and she was crippled. But she turned the entire town into glad town – even her aunt. I too decided to play a glad game. Every time something happened I found something to be glad about. I really became quite obnoxious, always saying, “I’m glad this … I’m glad that…” I started taking classes down at Duke [University] and they nicknamed me Pollyanna. I had forgotten about the book and I went back and reread it."