Gift or curse: how a family tragedy nearly killed America's 'smartest' girl
'02.02.2021'
Source: Tjournal.ru
Five-year-old Jasmine was predicted to be a huge success in science. However, a series of cruel events almost cost her not only hopes, but also her life. Tjournal.ru.
At six months, Jasmine, the daughter of a Greek émigré, started talking, at nine she read books, at thirteen she received her bachelor's degree and planned to get another five or six. To be closer to her roots, she changed her name to Prometheus, and the people around her hoped that her intellectual abilities would change the world.
Everything changed when a man he knew began to persecute Prometheus and her mother, believing that she was holding her daughter in slavery. This trauma seriously hit the girl's condition, depriving her of the opportunity to learn and develop at the same level. And the main thing is to achieve great discoveries.
Excursion to Disneyland from the world of science
40-year-old Greek immigrant Georgia Smith lived with her daughter Jasmine in an old red minivan with a rattling engine. They were evicted from an apartment in San Francisco and the woman was afraid that because of this they would be interested in social services. So Georgia and Jasmine rode around the city during the day, and parked in a free parking lot at night to sleep.
On the subject: Blood on the keys: how her father mocked Polina Osetinskaya to make her a child prodigy
In the summer of 1997, my mother decided to surprise her daughter - to take Jasmine on an excursion to the laboratory of Stanford University, where her daughter wanted to get more than Disneyland. Three Nobel laureates emerged from the walls of the SLAC accelerator laboratory, and it was the first in North America to launch its own website.
Jasmine enthusiastically joined the tour group. According to her, magic was happening within the walls of the laboratory. She listened with curiosity to the conversations of teachers and students who talked about electrons, lasers and X-rays.
At the end of the excursion, the group met with a physicist and Jasmine asked him a very atypical question for a five-year-old girl.
“How to avoid the accelerator melting due to the heat generated by the colliding particles?” Jasmine asked.
After a long pause, the physicist described in detail the design of the complex cooling system. Jasmine liked the answer. At the end of the meeting, the scientist approached Georgia and advised him to meet with Professor Mason Yearian, who would definitely be interested in talking with a smart girl beyond her years.
Yearian decided to talk to Jasmine without Georgia to check that the mother had not prompted her daughter. The professor asked Jasmine about her question and asked the girl to describe how the pendulum works. She easily described the complex physical process, talking to a man as an equal, not an adult.
Impressed, the scientist called his mother into the office, praised the girl and asked in surprise: "How did she learn so much?" Georgia replied that everything that her daughter knows, she learned on her own from books.
Bachelor at thirteen
Georgia Smith grew up in a Greek orphanage that was converted into military barracks. The orphans ate poorly, and their name was the bed number. In her case - 788. At the age of 16, she moved to her aunt in New Jersey, later got married and gave birth to two children - Vanessa and Apollo. The marriage soon fell apart due to her husband's cruelty, and Georgia moved to Boseman, Montana.
On the subject: Happiness and tragedy: different fates of the actresses who played the sisters in the film 'Maria, Mirabela'
In 1991, the woman was expecting her third child - Jasmine. This pregnancy could end badly - doctors warned that Georgia could die from complications in childbirth. She had no money and the birth at home was attended by a midwife who, right before that, helped give birth to a cow. She worked with Georgia with the same devices and brought the infection. However, everything worked out, the daughter and mother survived the infection safely.
It almost immediately became clear that Jasmine was an unusual child. At six months, the girl began to speak, at nine - she began to read books. At two years old she learned to write, and at three to multiply and count decimal fractions. In 1993, the Montana authorities wanted to take Apollo, so Georgia with the children left for California with almost no money. The family lived in a cramped basement that can only be accessed through the garage.
Georgia worked seven days a week for twelve hours. The children were alone, and Jasmine occupied herself with reading. The girl studied geography, history and literature, read the Greek epic and the novels of Charles Dickens. At the age of four, she took up algebra.
Jasmine's talent scared Georgia. It seemed to the woman that her efforts were not enough to reveal the potential of her daughter. In addition, she was afraid of repeating the story of Apollo: the boy spoke English and Greek well in the first year, but the ridicule and bullying of his peers completely suppressed the child's intellectual inclinations.
On the subject: Glory, death and a psychiatric hospital: how the fate of famous geeks developed
Georgia's fears are justified. In his book Far from the Tree, writer Andrew Solomon shattered the myth that the birth of a prodigy is like winning the lottery. In his opinion, the appearance of such a child puts parents before a choice between developing their life and career, or revealing the child's abilities.
In the second way, the maintenance of a child prodigy is more expensive, ordinary schools cannot provide the necessary environment for learning, and peers and adults are dismissive or derisive of the child, because he does not look like ordinary children. In this, the writer believes, child prodigies and children with disabilities are very similar, but at the same time, the attitude towards gifted children is much less condescending.
At the age of five, Georgia tried to send Jasmine to school, but she was refused, because even high school was no longer suitable for a girl. Mom wanted to send her to a private institution for gifted children, but she didn't have time. Her eldest daughter Vanessa was in a car accident, lost her husband and was almost completely paralyzed. Georgia had to travel with the children to Vanessa to care for her.
The woman agreed with the owner of the basement that she would return as soon as she helped her daughter, and he first agreed. But when she returned, she saw that the landlord had thrown out all of Georgia's belongings and evicted her. Then she firmly decided to help Jasmine develop her talents. Mom sent Apollo to his aunt in New Jersey, bought an old red minivan and set off with her daughter on the road.
On the subject: Smart and stupid: what is intelligence and is it possible to inherit it
After the story at the Stanford Laboratory, Professor Yearian was impressed by suggesting that Jasmine study remotely in a university course for gifted children. Around the same time, Georgia won a lawsuit with the owner of the basement: the judge declared the eviction illegal, but also declared unfit living conditions. The woman received compensation, which helped her to live with her daughter in Boseman and buy Jasmine an old computer for her studies at Stanford.
The girl successfully completed the courses, but attracted the attention of many skeptics who did not believe in her abilities. Later, the math teacher who tested Jasmine said she was "ten times smarter than the brightest students in his years."
At the age of 13, the girl received a bachelor's degree and became the youngest scientist at Montana University. At graduation, Jasmine said she was in no hurry to get her doctorate because she needed another five or six bachelor's degrees. Before that, she changed her name, becoming Prometheus Pifaita, feminizing the name of the Greek titan who gave people fire. Pifayta is the name of the mother of Pythagoras. It also resembled the name of the Pythia, the fortuneteller of the future from Delphi.
Georgia was very concerned about her daughter's safety. Classmates treated her negatively, laughing at her knowledge and taking advantage of the age difference between them and the girl. Prometheus herself was strongly attached to her mother and could not attend classes alone. Such a close bond united, but also intensified fears: mother and daughter constantly saw threats and carefully planned their actions. Subsequent events showed that their fears were not in vain.
Obsessed ill-wisher
In 2006, Prometheus needed money to continue his studies. She entered an essay competition and won ten thousand dollars. The competition is organized by the Greek Scholarship Forum - an NGO that helps Americans with Greek roots pay for their studies. Prometheus was also invited to speak at an evening commemorating the founders of the Greek Orthodox Church.
On the subject: The girl who wrote non-children's poems: the tragic fate of Nika Turbina
Studying the history of the formation of religion, she flew into a rage because of, as Prometheus herself said, "religious fascism." The first Orthodox Greeks burned books and temples from the times of Ancient Greece, tortured and killed people who did not support the new faith. An angry Prometheus wrote a 150-page speech that would take several hours to read. However, after the first hour of the speech, the guests and priests, outraged by the emotionality of the speech, began to accuse the girl of blasphemy and tried to shout down her.
But there were also those who, after the speech, approached Prometheus and thanked for her frankness. Then many ethnic Greeks found out about her: the diaspora wrote approving comments under the video with Prometheus's performance, and both approving letters and death threats came to the mail.
A couple of months later, Prometheus and Georgia were in a car accident. The daughter was not injured, but her mother was severely injured. Greeks from the local community helped raise money for medical treatment and a car, and one of them, 70-year-old Thomas Kairos, offered to pay his family for a vacation in Italy. But the mother and daughter agreed only to a trip to Greece.
Thomas Kairos made a positive impression of a kind and caring grandfather. He claimed to have previously worked as a physicist at a US university. After the vacation, Kairos wrote a lot to Prometheus: he called to live with him, lamented that she was not studying at the most prestigious university in America. He addressed the girl as a granddaughter, and called himself a little grandfather.
The family did not like the increased interest of Kairos: Prometheus sent back gifts and money that the man sent. Then the man decided that his mother was to blame for the cold attitude towards him. He began to spread rumors that Georgia was a tyrant and was holding his daughter in slavery. However, few people took his words seriously.
On the subject: At the wrong time, in the wrong place: the mysterious disappearance of Denise Huber
In 2011, Kairos embroiled Georgia in a legal dispute. He claimed that the woman seized the road adjacent to her house. So he had an excuse to come to Boseman. In the courtroom, he met Prometheus and pursued him all the way to the police station. He did not immediately agree to leave at the request of the police, and later the court forbade him to approach his family.
A week later, Kairos decided that Prometheus needed to be saved from the tyranny of Georgia. He took a car and a pistol and drove to the farm where the family lived. The man rammed the only gate to enter the site and stopped there.
Georgia came out to the noise, went to the car and was horrified when she saw Kairos' pistol pointed at her. He shot her and continued to shoot when the woman fell to the ground. Prometheus called the police, ran out of the house and covered her mother. With tears, she asked the man to stop.
"Why are you crying? You should be happy that mom is going to die, ”said Kairos.
Kairos was back in the car when two policemen drove up to the house. It became clear to the officers that the man was locked in the car and was not going to let the ambulance go to Georgia. He wanted her to die of wounds and blood loss. Approaching the car, the police demanded Kairos to drop his weapon and surrender, but the man only closed the window and turned away. When the officers tried to break the window, Kairos pointed a pistol at them, but did not have time to shoot: each police officer fired seven bullets at him. The man died instantly.
At the hospital, it was revealed that Kairos had been to Georgia five times. The bullets pierced the lung and bladder, small intestine, hip and shoulder. Some of the damaged organs had to be removed. The shocked Prometheus closed herself off from society and devoted herself entirely to caring for her mother, wondering if she had done enough to help Georgia.
Gift or curse
Six years have passed since the shooting at the Prometheus farm. She did not communicate with journalists and did not study at the University of Montana, but through her lawyer, journalist Mike Mariani managed to start a correspondence with the girl. Two months later, Prometheus agreed to meet at her home.
Georgia survived. The woman had partial paralysis of her left arm, nerves in the neck and shoulder were damaged, and many problems with internal organs. Psychologically, Georgia also suffered - she has severe post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression.
On the subject: Texas sniper: first mass shooting in US history
All this time, Prometheus was there, she gave up all desires and aspirations to help her mother recover. Georgia greeted the journalist with kindness, showed all the awards to her daughter and talked a lot about her. Prometheus was there and smiled at every story of her mother.
The family was constantly plagued by poverty, but the tragedy led to an unexpected "gift". Kairos left Prometheus two-thirds of his estate. The sale paid for a lawyer and paid for many medical procedures for Georgia. For the remaining amount, Prometheus set up a home art studio for her mother. She hopes that one day Georgia's work can be seen in art galleries.
The journalist noted that it is difficult to interact in a personal conversation with Prometheus. She seemed cheerful, but there was nothing behind it, as if she was completely devoid of emotion. There was no usual human communication in it, she studied the school curriculum alone from books, her mother was constantly with her at the university, and the students still treated her negatively.
Prometheus is still burning with knowledge and study. Former teachers say she can go to any university in the world. And Georgia really wants her daughter to move forward. The path of a girl who loved the particle accelerator from childhood more than Disneyland is still full of hope and promise.
