I wasn’t very old when I realized that my future as a supermodel was in peril.  It hit me one day when I watched a program where the models had to practice showing emotions in front of a mirror.  “Show me happy,” they were told.

    Happy? Really.  Nothing else?  Just happy?  I was confused. For me, emotions come in bundles. I didn’t have a singular ‘happy’ in my repetoire.   I got fifty shades of happy;  happy tinged with regret, happy dosed with envy, happy laced with irony, smug happy, bittersweet happy, giddy happy...really, it just goes on and on.  And don’t even get me started on excited.  

    It was a sad day then, when I had to face the fact that I was too emotionally complicated to ever be on a magazine cover.  

    But as bad as this was for getting on the outside of a magazine, it has worked out pretty well for being on the inside of a magazine.  Especially children’s magazines.  Writers are notoriously complicated.  Kids love complicated.  Ever ask them how they feel about something?  

    “So, how was school today?”

    “Okay, I guess.”

    “You guess?”

    “I was nervous giving my presentation.”

    “So you had a hard day?”

    “Ya, but I made the soccer team.”

    “So that was good, huh?”

    “Well, no.  Jimmy and me got in trouble in math class, so I had to stay in at lunch and miss the practice.”

    “Oh, I’m sorry, honey.”

    “That’s okay.  I got to help Mrs. Myers in the computer lab.”

    “So it was...”

    “It was a kinda hard, good, mad, exciting day.”

    Now we’re speaking my language.