OPRAH YOU ALMOST KILLED MY INNER CHILD!

Oprah Winfrey, queen of the teary talk-show hosts, almost killed my inner child. Maybe not intentionally -- actually she's forever cherishing this spark of youth still flickering within us -- but she did it relentlessly. Lets be honest, Oprah, you can sometimes kill the thing you love by loving it too much!

That's what almost happened to me. So much slobbering love and affection and talk talk talk. I never doubted you and your guests for a minute. My inner child -- that wondrous small spirit of youthful innocence -- had survived very nicely throughout my eight decades. Until you started turning it into what it's not. It's not just all about being giddy and goofy and wanting to shoot the moon. What's more it's not only about being rebellious and racy and looking to wear more purple.

My inner child survived this long simply because there's something about him I like. Even admire. I'm guessing the same way many of your audiences feel too. Instead of a flash of late-in-life ostentation, our inner child is more like the warmth of the-way-it-was. The way it was when we were still young enough to believe in fairies and goblins, Santa and saints. Young enough to understand Charles Schultz's comics gallery of little folks. Young enough to feel the world is good, our life is safe, and everyone loves us like Mom and Dad.

Oh, I understand! How ephemeral and gossamer are these illusions. Traveling the adult world all these years, we learn full well that Linus's little blue blanket is no longer enough to get through a day, let alone a life. We also learn full well it's a hard Darwinian struggle for survival out there. But we're still here, so apparently we knew how to survive the struggle.

Still....

That inner child Oprah and other do-gooders give so much attention is not merely a wispy memory. Or emotional escape. Or excuse to act out some long repressed fantasies. That inner child most of us have come to know is, well, it's just us...! It's just who we were, who we are, who we will likely be till the day we die. In case anyone has forgotten, it's many of the very same hurts and loves, trials and triumphs, fears and epiphanies we harbored as seeking children just outside the front door of that place we once called home.

Our world has changed much since then. Our mind and bodies and experiences too. And yet candor demands -- no, invites -- us to reflectively admit that our essence has remained mostly intact. Because, after all, there really was and still is only one of us in this world.