Freddie Plato and Her Family

Freddie Plato and Her Family

     Hi!  My name is John Napier Plato, Jr. and Freddie Plato is my daughter.  She has an older brother Richard, age 31, and a sister, Kwanlee, age 23.  My wife is a naturalized American citizen, Chinese by birth, born in Haikou, Hainan Province, China, and Freddie, Richard and Kwanlee are our adopted children born in Hong Kong except for Freddie, who was born in San Francisco.  Richard is an accomplished sketch artist, usually working with a variety of pencils.  Kwanlee, his and Freddie's younter sister,  is also a fine sketch artist and they are equally good at it.  Herein are Richard's pencil sketches of  Kwanlee, her friend Ruth and her  cousins from Hainan, and a sketch by Kwanlee of Richard's feet as he napped on a couch.  There is also a photo in here somewhere of Richard's feet, taken when he was asleep, but he refuses to have the rest of himself shown even though he's a good looking young man.  In another picture he and his sister pose in swim suits but he still doesn't want his face shown.  I really don't know why.  There's nothing wrong with his face.  In fact, he's quite handsome.  Freddie snapped a photo of me standing in our driveway and it is in here too somewhere.  Freddie allowed Richard to select almost all the pictures which are shown here, and the ones of people are almost all of female-type people, more specifically young beautiful ones.  Kwanlee objected that that is sexist and immature.  (She still loves her older brother, though).  Richard agreed on both counts but explained "I'm not mature and I love babes, so sue me".  (But he still loves his little sister).  How do you answer that?  A friend of mine once asked why Richard lets his sisters push him around the way they do.  I answered "he doesn't let them push him around.  They just do".  Mindy is one of Freddie's beautiful cousins.  She is half Chinese and half Polynesian, a wonderful combination.  Mindy was left homeless some years ago and lives with us.  Our lawyer is trying to arrange for us to adopt her but whether he succeeds or not she is part of our family as far as we are concerned and she wants to go by the name Mindy Plato, which I consider an honor.

     All three kids, of whom I am inordinately proud, are very intelligent and talented and none of them has given us anything but joy.  But Freddie is way beyond 'intelligent'.  She has one of the highest, if not the highest, IQs ever recorded in Florida or probably anywhere else.  A man in a position to know told me that Freddie's IQ is about the same as that of Albert Einstein.  Richard and Kwanlee are in awe of Freddie and she is the undisputed leader of the family, even my leader.  Various "experts" have tried to explain this extraordinary mind but they cannot.  She is a powerful, strong-willed young woman who gets her way when it matters, but she is also kind and decent and I have never met or even heard of anyone who doesn't love her.  Richard and Kwanlee brag about Freddie, sometimes so much that she has to tell them to cool it a bit, though I know she appreciates it.  I have never heard one single angry word from any of these three great kids.  For them the expression 'sibling rivalry' simply does not exist in their vocabulary.  For the record, I tried to discourage publication of some of the pictures you see in these essays, thinking them not entirely compatible with the over-all themes of the essays, but the kids outvoted me and, to my surprise, my wife joined them in that.  For one thing, without I hope sounding too melodramatic, she thought that the stunning beauty of Freddie, Kwanlee and Mindy should be shared with the world.  I can't disagree with that.
     Our family owns an island in the South Pacific.  We have all the conveniences of civilization, including a generator to light our house and a place to land a helicopter.  We keep it private, however.  There is only one picture here taken on our island, the one of Mindy.  It's not a big island but it's ours and we love to go there, particularly in the winter.  My wife and I are thinking of retiring there.

     I hope you enjoy this.

                                                            John Napier Plato, Jr.