Why It Had to be You? Where did the story come from?
Every story starts with a seed of an idea, something that triggers a what-if. That moment happened for me roughly five years ago at my son’s semi-final state track meet.
As I stood at the edge of the track, the final heat of the 4×100 runners lined up. The junior runner of a nearby competitor took the blocks in lane three, the fastest lane. He took his mark, set . . .
. . . and flinched.
The gun cracked twice, signaling a disqualification. It took a moment to put the pieces together as I watched this runner take his block and leave the track.
Around the track, I saw the other runners on his team take their blocks and also leave the race.
The runner crumbled into a ball in the middle of the field and began to sob.
Around me, mothers began to murmur. “What happened?” I asked my son.
“He scratched, so they disqualified him.”
“For flinching?”
“That’s high school rules.”
But the tragedy deepened. His cohorts came over and tried to comfort him, to no avail, some of them weeping as well.
“The thing is, this is the state champion-favored team,” my son said as the gun cracked for the beginning of the race. We hardly noticed it, eyes on the drama in centerfield. “And the entire team decided not to compete in any other events, reserving their strength for this race.”
I got it then—they were out of the state tournament. For this year . . .
“By the way, he’s the only junior. The rest are seniors.”
Oh. Forever then.
His flinch cost his entire team their state championship title. Hours upon hours, years upon years of work.
I wanted to drop to the grass and weep, too.
As a mother, that moment has haunted me. What happened to this boy? And his teammates?
What if his flinch cost them all their dreams? How terrible to carry that burden. Did the guilt crumble him? How would I, as his mother, help him through this? I think I would have a tendency to hover . . . maybe over-protect.
It was this idea that I carried into the story development of It Had To Be You—the idea that we are woven into the fabric of one another’s lives so much that we have the power to change them, for bad . . . or good. What if the smallest act could change a life—or many?
That thought morphed into a modern-day Good Samaritan story about a John Doe and the need to discover his family before he dies. One small act of kindness leads to another and another.
It Had to Be You is about all those people who stand at the sidelines and cheer for us, care about us, invest in us in large ways and small. And how we can change lives by small acts of great kindness.
I hope you’ll pick it up!
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