I was there. I saw it.

During my junior year in college, my roommate Kathy and I were f-l-a-t broke all the time. So we watched a lot of TV. 

We saw a commercial for Dollywood, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, two or three times a night. And we made fun of it, and Dolly Parton and the sort of people who would go there, every single time it ran.

Being the too-cool-for-school, ironic hipsters we thought we were at the time, along with the young girls who loved amusement parks we actually were, we decided it would be freaking hysterical to go to Dollywood and make cracks for a day. Fall break was coming and we both had fabulous Discover cards we'd gotten along with some free Tupperware we badly needed from the nice guy in the mall who didn't think our lack of tangible income was an impediment to getting credit.

We (and our best friend Rex) set off in Kathy's Hyundai (it was much nicer than my '77 Mazda GLC) on the six-hour journey to the Tennessee mountains. We checked in to the cheapest motel we could find (one bed for all three of us) and snickered about our plan.

First thing at 11 in the morning, we rallied, gorged ourselves at Duff's Smorgas, then set off to Dollywood. At the gate, we were offered two ticket options: one for the park only and one for the park and a Ray "The Streak" Stevens show. "As if," we sniffed snottily, purchasing our park-only tickets on our Discover cards.

We rode rides until the late afternoon. Because it was the off-season, there were no lines, so we did them over and over. 

Eventually, we got done with all the adrenaline rushes and settled back into our mission. We went to the Dolly museum.

"Bahahahaha, this is going to be so funny!" all three of us each said at some point as we waited in the longest line we'd encountered all day. 

We stopped making jokes once we got inside the exhibit. We saw pictures of poverty none of us could begin to imagine: a family of 12 children whose parents had no money in post-war Appalachia, but did the best they could.

I was starting to feel like the world's worst person around that time. But then we moved forward a few feet to the next exhibit.

There, behind the glass, was the coat of many colors. It was tiny and patchworked. The cuffs were frayed. It had grass stains. The story was written on the pane in front of it and the song played on a loop.

My friends teared up, but I wept like a baby. My nose started running and I had nowhere to blow it. I got the little kid wind-sucking sound because I couldn't catch my breath from crying. Kathy and Rex gently guided me back out into the sunlight.

We don't talk much about it, but we all changed that day. We were never the same again. 

I think I can speak for all of us, though. If you laugh and make fun of our Dolly, we will cut you up pretty bad.