Shirley Template

     Not long ago, I bought some Shirley Temple stamps.  How nice to put her sweet, pure image on a piece of mail, I thought.  I must have been in a different frame of mind today when I stuck one of my Shirley stamps on an outgoing bill.  Shirley Template, I thought, feeling sorry for all the little girls who had to sit still while their mothers wound their hair up in pin curls.  I felt even sorrier for the ones who had to enter Shirley look alike contests where looking like themselves would make them losers.
   

     Banish those thoughts from my head!  Shirley Temple was a good role model.  Though she had a brief teenage marriage, her second union lasted 54 years - until her husband died in 2005. She became a representative to the United Nations and an ambassador.  Shirley served on the boards of several businesses and organizations.  She spoke openly about breast cancer when she was diagnosed with the disease in 1972.  Though she had a life long cigarette smoking habit, she never smoked in public because she knew people might follow her example.  It would have been better if she quit, but nobody's perfect.
     So, Honey Boo Boo, improve your diet and do a little exercise.  Miley, get dressed and put your tongue back in your mouth.  Kardasians, every single one of you, turn off the cameras and enroll in some college courses.  Then maybe, just maybe, you might someday end up on a stamp.