"Taking Stock"

As a generic photo of a woman used on sales flyers, medical brochures, and government documents, you can consider me the perfect person to ask where to find the nearest Starbucks or the exact date of next Tony Awards, as I am both a working Actress and Model.

However, I am not your best choice for inquiries regarding emphysema or the new higher education savings plans.

I hope you will appreciate that you may have seen me on documents where my image has been used to generate your interest in a product or service. These are not subjects on which I am expert.

I know a great deal about knitting, dressing on a budget, and geological formations in Mono Lake (I watched the special on PBS), but virtually nothing about speedy oil changes or Taco Twos-Day at your local Livin' Mi Carne Loca restaurant.

Similarly, I have no idea how to have medication shipped to your door, as I have never met anyone from BestMeds.com. Nor am I responsible for those fine people flooding your e-mail inbox with discount offerings from their Canadian headquarters.

Just because you saw me wearing glasses and pointing at a chart on a four-color time management training brochure, please don't ask about my preference for office calendar programs within in a Microsoft Windows environment. I still can't remember where I dropped off my schnauzer for grooming.

In fact, I've never even worked in an office.

Which means, with the exception of during the actual photoshoots themselves, I have never had my "boss" lean over my shoulder to look at an item on my computer screen, directed coworkers to the nearest exit wearing an orange safety vest, or fallen but couldn't get up.

Yes, I travel. But when I do, I never leap into the air with my briefcase in the airport (as I did in an image used on the JetAmerica brochure). I'm not even sure you could do such a thing anymore without being approached by the TSA.

I do not have children nor, if I did, would I let them eat hamburgers as I did my "children" in stock shot #6580. I'm a devoted vegetarian.

I am not married to the model who looks a lot like Tyson Beckford, which means our marriage couldn't possibly suffer from the sort medical of dysfunction indicated in that brochure.

I do not suffer from eczema, bipolar manic depression, and/or bunions, nor do I need to be educated on the proper handling of raw food in the kitchen.

So please stop pestering me with your inquiries.

In fact, all of us at the Stock Photo Model Union Local 544 hope there will come a day when you won't stop us in the grocery store because we seem familiar, then keep us from buying our food while you try to conjure up places you believe we could have met.

We're letting you know right now, you don't know us at all.

We're the models/actors who pretend to play the people who have your chemical imbalance, experience the same problems you do raising children, and seal deals by shaking hands with customers in offices which are, in fact, made of plywood.

We're your Local 544.

And we ask you to leave us in peace so that we can go about our lives as normal human beings.

Thank you.

And don't forget to see our show "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" at the Garage Theatre, 1845 W. Broxton, N. Hollywood on Thursday and Friday nights through March 10th. Tickets are just $20!