This story, Being Shirley Temple, is of Mona, an ordinary woman, who survives an extraordinary childhood that includes a short stint as a Shirley Temple model. Although she is expected to emulate the child star who epitomized optimism and the happy ending, the experience leads her to conclude that life takes you where it wants, and that Shirley Temple happiness is an illusion. She must learn to make do, and in making the best of life's uncontrollable path, she still finds reasons to laugh. Her daughter-in-law, the story's narrator, listens to Mona's history and in doing so begins to put her own sense of entitlement to a life underwritten with happiness in a new perspective.

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