Do you smell fish?

Let's think about this for a minute. Cute boy lands some modeling jobs then eventually gets some acting jobs. Ends up in a movie that at the time didn't seem too significant. The movie is about teenagers and crushes and bawdy behavior. But the movie is funny and the characters are endearing. Time passes. For whatever reason boy leaves the acting career behind and slips away quietly to never be heard from again in any public media. No interviews, no paparazzi photos, no scandals, no stints in rehab, no untimely death, no trace. Time passes. The movie has become the darling of a generation. Fan pages are formed on social networking sites, t-shirts are made, the movie is aired in syndication almost every weekend. People all over the whole world still fondly quote the movie on a daily basis and reminisce over the brown eyed boy who captured their hearts all those years ago. They start to wonder where he went? What is he doing with his life all these years later? They google him. What turns up is found in every nook and cranny on the web with very few variations. Wikipedia states,"The lack of roles and a family to feed were his reasons for retiring from acting. He now lives with his wife, and their two teenage children in Northeastern Pennsylvania, producing handcrafted furniture as the owner of a woodworking shop."

It's that simple. But what we just can't grasp is with so many fans who would love to own a piece of his furniture (including us, let's be honest) how has he been able to avoid the spotlight so completely, so thoroughly. In the age of bodyguards, paparazzi, and stars buying private islands for refuge it seems too "Leave it to Beaver" that Michael Schoeffling could just be whittling wood.