Samantha Fox: Teenage Esquire

Samantha Fox: Teenage Esquire
Chapter 1: Who is Samantha Fox?
         Life is so hectic. Yea, I know, all 15 year old girls say that, but I mean it. Life is hectic! I have to deal with all the normal everyday high school drama; you know friend, boys, grades, and teachers and not to mention parents. But I’m dealing with more than any other girls I know. Don’t worry, my story isn’t one of a poor lonely freshman so desperate to be accepted she ends up pregnant. Though, come to think of it, that life may be more hectic then mine.
         No, mine is a story of a high school freshman genius. I don’t mean to brag. No really, I don’t. Being the smartest kid in all of Santa Ana isn’t something you would really want to brag about. You may be wondering why a girl genius would be in high school. You’ve all heard the stories of genius kids who test out of high school at the age of 8 and go on to graduate with a Masters in Bio-Chem by the time their 14, and before their even old enough to legally drink their finding cures for cancer. Well, not for me. Well not exactly anyway. I did graduate high school when I was 11, and was accepted into Harvard and Yale. But none of that was by choice.
My parents were always over achievers, and thought their only daughter should be too. Not only am I the only daughter, I am the only child. My parents were so sure their first child would be everything they wanted and more that they didn’t feel a need to try again. They didn’t even wait until I was in school to start my ‘perfect’ life. By the time I could talk, I had a personal tutor, teaching me how to read, write and count. I guess I showed promise, because when I was 3 my parents sat down and decided we needed to live in California. Not because of all the pretty beaches, celebrities or the rich culture to expose a child to, but because of a school. That’s right, my dear old mom and dad decided to move and live in Santa Ana, California because of the Hillcrest School, the best private school or gifted kids that money could buy, apparently. When I was 4, I started in Junior Kindergarten, since my birthday is October 2nd and I couldn’t start Kindergarten, no matter how smart I was.
That was the first memory I have of my parents getting mad. They were convinced that I should have been able to start kindergarten early because I was—in the words of my dad “too smart to be held back with a bunch of children who will only hold her back.” And when my parents were fighting with the Head of the School, I remember deciding I wanted to explore the school, and a couple hours later they found me in one of the Junior Kindergarten rooms playing the a little girl names Mallerie, who soon became my best friend. My parents said this was why they allowed them to put me in that class, but I think the Head of the School cut them down to size and it was JK or nothing. But that’s just me.
So I spent the next 5 miserable years at Hillcrest. You know those commercials you see about resorts or something that look all beautiful and spectacular with ‘Bradgelina’ looking couples lounging by the pools? The ones that convince you to shell out $6,000 for a vacation where the pool hasn’t been cleaned in a year and the beaches are polluted and you come home with malaria. Well that would have been a nice break from Hillcrest.
The school was unbearable. We started school at seven o’clock in the morning, and went until three o’clock in the afternoon. If you look on the website and see pictures of kids laughing and smiling and playing, their probably photo shopped or something because that almost never happened; and if it did the kid was probably being paid for some publicity stunt. Recess was almost non-existent. They called it recess but it was more of a less annoying gym class. The only difference was that we were able to choose what sport you wanted to play, instead of being told which one to play. Other than that, it’s the same old military style school. Which, of course, none of the parents ever knew about. I think they were all brainwashed into believing this was the perfect school full of perfect happy kids being taught how to be perfect geniuses by perfect teachers. There was even a rumor that the school would switch out horror letters for wonderful letters full of puppies and butterflies (well, not really but you know what I mean.) That would really explain things.
So you could see why my jaw had to be scrapped off of the floor when Mallerie’s parents came and took her away. I knew she wasn’t happy there. (I mean who was?) And I knew she tried to tell her parents what was wrong, and I figured it was no use when she wrote to them. But Mallerie was smart, well everyone here was smart, but she was more than book smart. She was able to come up with a plan that worked. She never would tell me what it was because she was sure the whole place was bugged, and I wouldn’t disagree. And I guess her mom talked to my mom (since she would listen to an adult but not her genius daughter) because I got called to the head of the schools office and was told to pack my bags because my dad was really sick and I was being taken out of school. Of course, he wasn’t really sick but I’m pretty sure that was the only reason, short of death, that a student would be allowed to leave the school before they finished the 8th grade.
So I guess that’s where my story really begins. At this point mom and dad had different Ideas of what should happen. Dad wanted me tested and put into another expensive private school, and mom wanted to include me in the decision making this time; since I was getting older and after all I was the freaking genius of the family! I liked my mom’s idea, but I was such a daddy’s girl that I hated to disappoint him. So when asked what I would like to do, I told them I wanted to get tested, and then we would decide after we got the results.
Well, it took me all of 2 hours to take 5 hours of testing (no surprise there) and then another 2 days to be told I was at a 10th grade level, and 2 weeks later I was working with another tutor. Then, 2 years later when I was 11 years old, I got my high school diploma in the mail. It took no time at all for colleges to start calling, offering full scholarships. And this was the extent of my input in the decision making. I guess mom had forgotten about wanted me to be happy, because they decided I would go to Yale.