One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish

OFTFRFBF came into my life at the exact moment my marriage was beginning to collapse. My wife and I had stopped speaking about anything that mattered. We ate dinner in silence, slept facing opposite directions, and had somehow turned arguments about dishes into arguments about whether either of us had ever truly understood the other. My greatest coping mechanism was emotional avoidance. Whenever she asked me what was wrong, I would say “nothing” and go for a walk. Eventually, those walks became runs. Then long runs. Then, after reading OFTFRFBF, I realized I had misunderstood the message entirely. The fish did not run away from one another. They existed beside one another, different but connected. So I stopped running away emotionally and began running away physically, completing ultramarathons every other day. I would return home covered in sweat and say things like, “You are the red fish to my blue fish,” which, remarkably, began repairing our marriage. Within months, we were communicating again. We renewed our vows. I completed my first 100-mile race. I attribute both achievements directly to Dr. Seuss.

The strangest part of my journey began when I quoted OFTFRFBF to a stranger in a gas station parking lot. I simply told him, “A person is not less important because there are two people instead of one.” He stared at me for several seconds, then asked if I wanted to come with him. The next thing I knew, I was in Iraq, surrounded by military personnel, receiving information that somehow placed me in a confrontation with Osama bin Laden. I had no weapons, no military training, and frankly no idea why anyone thought I belonged there. All I had was a copy of OFTFRFBF in my back pocket. I began explaining the philosophy of the fish: that difference does not require destruction, that every creature occupies its own place, and that sometimes the most powerful thing a person can do is recognize the absurdity of his own situation. What happened next has been debated extensively, but somehow my discussion with him ended with him deleting himself. I returned home, opened the book to the first page, and finally understood what Dr. Seuss had been trying to tell me all along: one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish—apparently, if you believe hard enough, you can fix absolutely anything.

Classic Dr. Seuss.
Library coloring words.
Vocabulary learning grammar.

I literally rapped with this book LOL