Sweet Miss Jillian

As our loyal fans will know, we aren’t afraid to make our heroines undergo some pretty radical transformations. What might not be common knowledge is that we’ve seen some transformative changes in the young people we know that are every bit as incredible as those we put our fictional characters through. And for all of these changes we’ve witnessed, perhaps none have been more remarkable than the changes experienced by our niece, Jill.

Jill has always been pretty and, until recently, she seemed destined to grow up a beautiful airhead. During most of her time in school, Jill was the bane of her overachieving mother’s existence, since she happily avoided anything that was remotely mentally challenging. It was a daily struggle to get this lovely girl to do any homework at all, and even the idea of completing anything challenging, like math or science, was absurd. It got so bad at home that Jill would regularly come to our house for after school studying just to ease the tension at home. While we were no better at getting her to complete her school work, it was a lot more pleasant around our kitchen table having snacks and listening to all the reasons why it would be impossible for our lovely niece to finish her class assignments.

Then, seemingly overnight while she was in high school, Jill decided she was a genius. The next thing we knew she had not only caught up all of her old coursework, but she was acing all of the advanced courses she was offered. She’s still gorgeous and laid back, but now she attends a university on scholarship and can’t decide if she wants to pursue advanced studies in math, physics, or perhaps something involving artificial intelligence. Her vocabulary is now so advanced that not even her mother understands the jargon that spills out from around her still knockout smile. We keep searching the USB port we figure is located on the back of her head somewhere since we think Jill’s mom traded her in on a robot when no one was looking.

Whatever it was, Jill’s changes were no less spectacular than what we put our fictional characters through. And, while we admit we were taken completely by surprise, we couldn’t be any more proud of our wonderful niece.