Why The Real Tracy Fields? Two reasons.

One: back in the day, at the dawn of the internet, I owned the domain name tracyfields.com. Didn’t do anything with it for a few years, so I let it go. When I was ready, someone else owned it. At last check, it was for sale for $895. Also, I was surprised to find out how common my name is. And not all of us are as nice as the young lady from West Virginia. 🙂

Two: remember The Velveteen Rabbit, a children’s book by Margery Williams? In it, two of the toy characters discuss becoming Real.

“What is REAL?” the Velveteen Rabbit asked the Skin Horse one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Velveteen Rabbit .

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. But once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”