NOTE: Found this file on my computer just now. Wrote it 8 years ago. Still musing, I guess…

“Have you been a good girl?”

When I was little, someone gave me AA Milne’s collection, “Now We Are Six”. It contained poems that were rhyming, silly, nonsense but were oh, so much fun to recite!

One of my favorites, though, I don’t think I really understood until I was much older:

It’s funny how often they say to me, “Jane”
“Have you been a good girl?”
“Have you been a good girl?”
And when they have said it, they say it again,
“Have you been a good girl?”
“Have you been a good girl?”

I go to a party, I go out for tea,
I go to an aunt for a week at the sea
I come back from school or from playing a game;
Wherever I come from, it’s always the same:
“Well?
Have you been a good girl, Jane?”

It’s always the end of the loveliest day;
“Have you been a good girl?”
“Have you been a good girl?”
I went to the Zoo, and they waited to say:
“Have you been a good girl?”
“Have you been a good girl?”

Well, what did they think that I went there to do?
And why should I want to be bad at the Zoo?
And should I be likely to say if I had?
So that’s why it’s funny of Mummy and Dad,
This asking and asking, in case I was bad,
“Well?
Have you been a good girl, Jane?”

“The Good Little Girl”
A. A. Milne
from Now We Are Six

That question circulates daily: Have I been a good girl?