The Modelling Stint

When I was ten, my mom, always a sucker for money-making scams, decided that I could potentially be very lucrative to her, and so enrolled me in modelling classes in Boston that claimed to take clumsy toothless children and turn them into child stars.

6 Saturdays, 200 black & white head shots, and $4000 dollars later, I was a certified model through the Cameo Kids Modeling Agency. What does this mean, you may wonder? Well, besides a closed circuit television commercial for Campbell's soup, in which I was eating out of a clearly empty bowl, I didn't have too much going on. My career was about as happening as Stephanie Tanner's after the cancellation of Full House.

Sure, I had a few stints here and there. I was in a shoot for Met Life magazine posing on a basketball court, and a couple of other minor roles, but nothing serious. Lets just say it was taking me longer than I thought to pay off the new Huffy. All of this is pre- "big break". When it came, it came hard and fast. My classmates turned green with envy. The pay was good, the job was easy, and the rewards... well, they would launch me into print modelling stardom.

It was a shoot for McGraw Hill, the text book company. Specifically, a fifth grade math book. I remember the day vividly. I could hardly sleep the night before. I was picked up after first period by my driver (Parental Unit #1) and whisked off; the starlet that I was, to an undistingishable office park on the outskirts of Boston. Since I didn't know what they would make me wear, I brought plenty of outfits in the event that they wanted me to put on a runway show or strike some poses. So I arrive, and there's 4 other kids there. It is a scene from a fucking United Nations ad: The Asian male, the little black girl with cornrows, a dorky looking white kid in a polo shirt and glasses, and me. What was my role? I wondered. I would soon find out.

A mock classroom had been set up- equipped with a chalkboard and roundtable where we would be sitting. Feeling unsure of myself in the hideous duds they put me in, I was apprehensive about where I was supposed to sit. I was not yet a seasoned model at this point. The woman running the shoot took me by the arm.

"You're going to be sitting there" she pointed.
She obviously was mistaken.
"Sorry, where?"
"In the wheelchair" she said impatiently.

"You want me to sit.. In. A. Wheelchair"??? THIS was my big break?? They wanted me to play a retard in a fucking wheelchair?? Wait until the kids at school got wind of this..

Ten minutes later and after much convincing from my mother, I sat in the wheelchair and smiled meekly at the Asian, who at this point had already constructed a replica of the Eiffel Tower out of the blocks on the table. Who said stereotypes aren't true?? I played the part well, refusing to take direction and making obscene gestures throughout the entirety of the shoot. Lets just say I never got another job offer from the company. My career ended as quickly as it had begun.

And for the record: this 1995 McGraw Hill basic math book is no longer in circulation, so don't even try to locate it.