Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? is a 1973 picture book by Dr. Seuss. The hero meets an optimistic older man who gives him a long list of reasons why he should consider himself lucky.
This book includes examples of the following tropes:
- An Aesop: There are a lot of people less fortunate than you are.
- All Deserts Have Cacti: The Desert of Drize sports dozens of cacti.
- Cactus Cushion: The old man the protagonist meets in the beginning of the story sits atop a cactus. Unusually, this marks a rare case of the trope not causing pain; the spot he's sitting on contains no spines and he carefully positions himself to avoid the spines on the other parts of the cactus.
- Casts No Shadow: Harry Haddow, who is shown shadowless next to a whole bunch of people who can cast a shadow.
- Clothes-Eating Wager: At one point, the narrator says of the Schlottz, an unfortunate beast with its tail tied in knots, "If he isn't muchly more worse off than you, I'll eat my umbrella, that's just what I'll do."
- Conjoined Twins: The Brothers Bazoo are conjoined by their hair.
- Cool Old Guy: The fellow who the narrator meets in the Desert of Drize, who, well, tells him how lucky he is. He also manages to sit safely on a cactus.
- Didn't Think This Through: Poor Herbie Hart, who has taken his throm-dib-u-lator apart, and is trying to put it together. He apparently didn't think about that last part.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Pants-Eating-Plants do indeed eat pants.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: The old man tells the kid about a lot of folks who work hard at crummy jobs.
- Ali Sard has to mow "quick-growing grass" in his stingy uncle's backyard, and paint flagpoles on Sundays to get by.
- Mr. Potter is a t-crosser-i-dotter who dots i's and crosses t's at an I and T factory.
- Professor DeBreeze who has spent 32 years trying to teach Irish ducks how to speak Jivanese.
- The worst example is probably the Hauch-Hauchers in Hauch-Hauch. One was told to watch a bee, but didn't do well, so another was told to watch him. Then he didn't do so well, so another Haucher had to watch him, and so on, until all of them were watching each other.
