History Main / AndThatLittleGirlWasMe

* In Music/{{Metallica}}'s "The Unforgiven", the narrator switches between first (in the chorus) and third person. The last verse ends with:
--> The old man then prepares\\
To die regretfully -\\
That old man here is me.

* Music/{{Eminem}} used this in 'Criminal,' as part of another rant against his mother:
-->My mother did drugs, hard liquor, cigarettes, and speed\\
The baby came out - disfigured, ligaments indeed.\\
It was a seed who would grow up just as crazy as she.\\
Don't dare make fun of that baby, 'cause that baby was me.
* Music/BritneySpears has done this with 'Girl in the Mirror.'
--> ''I can't believe it's what I see''
--> ''That the girl in the mirror''
--> ''The girl in the mirror''
--> ''Is me''
* Music/EmilieAutumn, Opheliac

* The chorus of Lindsay Lohan's "Drama Queen (That Girl)" from the similarly-named film ''Film/ConfessionsOfATeenageDramaQueen'':
--> That girl was a one-time teenage drama queen,
--> A hot, tough everyday wannabe,
--> But she'll have changed her destiny, now she's a somebody.
--> That girl was a wild-child dreamer but she found herself.
--> 'Cause she believes in nothing else,
--> And you'll look back and you won't believe
--> That girl was me.
* In Jim Croce's "Box #10", the narrator sings of "a down home country boy" who has a rough time of it in the {{Big Apple|sauce}}. The verse ends with, "Oh well [[LampshadeHanging it's easy for you to see]] that that country boy is me".

* In Music/JoJo's unreleased song "Paper Airplanes", describing a disintegrating relationship:
--> I feel her pain,
--> 'Cause she's me.
%%* The country standard "Harper Valley P.T.A.".
* The spoken word song "Deck of Cards" has the artist tell a story about a soldier who was once caught in church with a deck of cards. They wanted to punish him, but he then explained he didn't have a Bible and used the characters and signs on the cards to remind him of biblical facts and characters. He then concludes: "And that soldier... was me."

* This trope is reference in Lauren O'Connell's song "The Pilot":
--> Didn't know what he told those stories for
--> 'Bout the [[HandicappedBadass only blind pilot]] in the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII second Great War]]
--> And when he'd reach the end, we'd say
--> "That man was me".
* Danish singer Anna David's song "Den Lille Pige" ("The Little Girl") about a teenage girl who was raped. Translated into English: "Even though she's a grown-up now, she'll never forget you. Take my word - I know it, because the little girl was me".
* In Music/LeonardCohen's "Winter Lady" song, the narrator invites a stranger to stay the night. He then talks idly about her resemblance to his ChildhoodFriend, finishing:
-->''And why are you so quiet now\\
standing there in the doorway?''
* Inverted at the end of Music/{{Eminem}}'s "Stan". When Eminem finally reads Stan's [[SanitySlippage increasingly unhinged]] [[ApocalypticLog letters]] and sits down to respond to him, he tries to warn him that he's on a dark path and that he really needs to get help. After all, Eminem had just seen a news report about [[spoiler:a man who drove off a bridge with his pregnant girlfriend in the trunk]], and he wonders how somebody could be so sick as to do something like that. Then he remembers what the news report said the man's name was...

* Music/StevieNicks belts out "That girl was me!" at the end of her song "Angel", but the rest of the lyrics confusingly address a friend or lover, who may or may not be dead, so we're not sure...

* In Bob Dylan's song "Simple Twist of Fate", Dylan uses first person pronouns to narrate a story about a man and a woman who had a romantic encounter that ended. In the last verse, the narrator switches to first person - "I still believe she was my twin" - revealing that he was the man in the story.

* In Leonard Cohen's "Winter Lady" song, the narrator invites a stranger to stay the night. He then talks idly about her resemblance to his ChildhoodFriend, finishing:

* The video for Music/IceNineKills' "Hell in the Hallways", an homage to the book and film ''Literature/{{Carrie}}'', features a high school guidance counselor trying to [[ScareEmStraight scare a bully straight]] by giving him a book to read about one Carrie White, a teenage girl with psychic powers who [[PromWrecker killed all her bullies at prom]] ten years ago. The video ends with the guidance counselor closing her office door with [[MindOverMatter just a wave of her hand]], with the nametag on the door revealing that she is Carrie all grown up.

* The Creator/TexAvery cartoon ''[[WesternAnimation/TexAveryMGMCartoons Dixieland Droopy]]'' tells the story of how John Irving Pettybone (Droopy the dog) acquires a Dixieland band made up of fleas, granting him his life-long dream of being a Dixieland conductor. At the end, the cartoon's narrator is revealed to be Pee Wee Runt, the trumpet-player in the band.

* In ''News of the Dead'' by James Robertson, one of the intersecting stories is the artist Maja remembering the "dumb lassie", a very young refugee who arrived in the glen after WWII, unable to speak and named Flora by the couple who took her in. After several years, the dumb lassie is asked to sign a landscape she painted, and signs it with the name she remembers from her passport, which is, of course, Maja.

* The wedding guest in ''Series/TheHauntingOfBlyManor'' tells the bride and groom the story of an au pair employed to work in a haunted house. The woman falls in love with the gardener there, but [[spoiler:the story ends tragically when the au pair succumbs to a ghost possessing her. The gardener lives on however, and its revealed that she is the one telling the story.]]

* The wedding guest in ''Series/TheHauntingOfBlyManor'' tells the bride and groom the story of an au pair employed to work in a haunted house. The woman falls in love with the gardener there, but [spoiler:the story ends tragically when the au pair succumbs to a ghost possessing her. The gardener lives on however, and its revealed that she is the one telling the story.]]

* WebVideo/WoolieVersus: In the VideoGame/The3rdBirthday Playthrough, while Woolie and Minh were reflecting on past regrets ([[ItMakesSenseInContext long story]]), Minh tells a story about the time where he asked a friend of his to check his email on their PC, but wound up closing all of his friend's [[TabExplosion millions of tabs]] in the process, and lied to said friend about it out of embarassment. Since there was no browser history in those days, there was no recovering them, and his friend was really depressed about it. Minh then asks Woolie whether or not the story seems familar to him:

* In ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'', Ratchet explains to Raf how, during the war, a field medic saved Bumblebee's life, but couldn't save his voice. While he speaks about the field medic in the third person, the flashback clearly shows that it was Ratchet.

* The video for Music/IceNineKills' "Hell in the Hallways", an homage to the book and film ''Literature/{{Carrie}}'', reveals at the end that Carrie White is now the school's guidance counselor, and that she told the bully the story of how she [[PromWrecker killed all her bullies at prom]] in order to [[ScareEmStraight scare him straight]].

* Played with in "Three Wooden Crosses", made popular by Randy Travis, where four passengers board a bus, "A farmer and a teacher, a hooker and a preacher." At the end of the song, it's revealed that it's a preacher telling the story. The twist is that the preacher telling the story is actually the hooker's son, having been inspired by the bloodstained Bible that the preacher gave to his mother before dying.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/ThunderCats2011'' episode "The Duelist and the Drifter", [[spoiler:the Drifter, a.k.a. Hattanzo the Swordmaker]] uses this technique to relate his past to Lion-O, warning the young hero that he'll inevitably duplicate his failure because they're NotSoDifferent.

Compare YouKnowWhoSaidThat or HistoricalPersonPunchline, where the anonymous example of some value turns out to be a historical figure. Also compare IHaveThisFriend, ActuallyIAmHim, and LetMeTellYouAStory. For when the entire story turns out to have been one of these, see NarratorAllAlong. If the main character does this, it's NostalgicNarrator.

* In the 2010 South African film ''White Lion'', we meet an old man telling the story of Letsatsi (the titular white lion) to a group of children around a campfire. At the end, we learn that the storyteller is Gisani, the Tsonga youth who followed Letsatsi on his journey.

Compare YouKnowWhoSaidThat, where the anonymous example of some value turns out to be a historical figure. Also compare IHaveThisFriend, ActuallyIAmHim, and LetMeTellYouAStory. For when the entire story turns out to have been one of these, see NarratorAllAlong. If the main character does this, it's NostalgicNarrator.

* There is an inversion about Leonardo Da Vinci painting ''Art/TheLastSupper''. In order to find the appropriate look for Judas, he went to the local prisons and found a man who looked haggard, angry and dangerous and used him as the model. Some years later he still hadn't found the right person to stand in for Jesus. While pondering the question, a man walked into the studio who looked perfect, clean, with kind features. Leonardo immediately chose the man as his inspiration for Jesus. When Leonardo asked the man if they had ever met, the man replied "Yes, I was Judas."

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheRaccoons'', the episode "Trouble Shooter!" sees Bentley Raccoon running away from home and, after an OutOfContextEavesdropping incident, thinking he is not welcome with Bert and Cedric either and hitting the road. Cyril Sneer goes after him and tells him the story of a kid he used to know who, like Bentley, ran away from his family because he thought he could make it on his own. The kid in question grew up to be a millionaire, but there were a lot of "lost, lonely years" before he struck it rich, and no amount of money can buy back that lost time. Bentley correctly deduces that Cyril is talking about himself.

* During the second night of the first Democratic Debates in 2019, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11U-rzW8Ufc Kamala Harris attacked Joe Biden]] over his previous opposition to desegregation busing, telling the story of a young girl who was part of busing, before {{Name Drop}}ping this trope to the surprise of Biden and everyone else. [[MemeticMutation It quickly became one of the more iconic moments of her campaign.]]
** The exchange was perhaps rendered even ''more'' iconic by the fact that Biden eventually won the Democratic nomination and selected Harris as his running mate. This collaboration burnished the reputations of both candidates; showing that Biden valued honest criticism and did not hold grudges (in contrast to his Republican opponent) and that Harris was not afraid to speak truth to power. The Biden-Harris ticket went on to win the 2020 Presidential Election with a historic number of votes (81 million) and “that little girl” became the first woman, first black person and first person of Asian descent to be elected Vice President of the United States.

* In ''ComicBook/IncredibleHercules'' #139 ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} fights [[BigBad Hera]]'s Huntsman, who tells him a story about a hunter named Cephalus, who killed his own wife accidentally with his own javelin that never missed and then was DrivenToSuicide, relating the events of the story to Wolverine's own life. Wolverine retorts that his story isn't going to end with ''his'' death, but the huntsman's. The huntsman then replies that though his face is distorted in Tartarus as punishment for suicide, he himself is Cephalus, and impales Wolverine InTheBack with a javelin of light.

* ''Film/WhereTheTruthLies'': Karen tells the story of a little girl with polio who was able to get treatment thanks to money raised during a telethon in the 1950s. It turns out it's her.

* ''Film/WhereTheTruthLies'': The journalist tells the story of a little girl who was saved thanks to a call-in show. It turns out it's her.

* In one of the promotional comics for ''VideoGame/{{Nier}}'', Kaine tells a story about a warrior who protected a young boy from Shades. Weiss doesn't buy it. [[spoiler: Kaine refers to the warrior (herself) as a man, adding some foreshadowing to [[{{Hermaphrodite}} her own dilemma]].]]

** The exchange was perhaps rendered even ''more'' iconic by the fact that Biden eventually won the Democratic nomination and selected Harris as his running mate. This collaboration burnished the reputations of both candidates; showing that Biden valued honest criticism and did not hold grudges (in contrast to his Republican opponent) and that Harris was not afraid to speak truth to power. The Biden-Harris ticket went on to win the Presidential general election with a historic number of votes (81 million) and “that little girl” became the first woman, first black person and first person of Asian descent to be elected Vice President of the United States.

** The exchange was perhaps rendered even ''more'' iconic (with historical overtones) by the fact that Biden eventually won the Democratic nomination and selected Harris as his running mate. This collaboration burnished the reputations of both candidates; showing that Biden valued honest criticism and did not hold grudges (in contrast to his Republican opponent) and that Harris was not afraid to speak truth to power. The Biden-Harris ticket went on to win the Presidential general election with a historic number of votes (81 million) and “that little girl” became the first woman, first black person and first person of Asian descent to be elected Vice President of the United States.

** The exchange was perhaps rendered even ''more'' iconic (with historical overtones) by the fact that Biden eventually won the Democratic nomination and selected Harris as his running mate on the ticket that went on to win the general election, making UsefulNotes/KamalaHarris the first black person (as well as the first woman and first person of Asian descent) to be elected Vice President of the United States.