Name: Samantha [Sam] Fricker
Age: 21
Gender: Female
Species: Human
Occupation: College Student [Major: Education. Minor: Japanese {Includes history, language, and culture}] ; Instructor at the local Kenpo Karate Dojo; Part-time pizza delivery girl
Abilities:
Karate and Kendo;
Sam started karate at the age of seven. Her parents signed her up at the local Dojo because they figured karate might help her learn to control herself. She enjoyed the freedom of running around and loved learning how to fight, just like her favorite cartoon heroes. Sam spent seven years studying the martial arts, but was somewhat upset when she joined the adult class upon making it to the purple belt level. Sam had difficulty through her years of karate, mainly when she started sparring. She had issues blocking from the right side and seeing hits coming from that direction. Her sensei seemed confused by this, but when her father mentioned her eye, he understood and tried to work with her a bit on it, attempting to show her how to anticipate an attack, which she wasn't very good at.
Fun was not the case in the older student's class. She had to learn self-control, but was quite outspoken in class, rustling in her having to run laps or do push-ups. She did enjoy sparring, as she took that up when she reached her green belt. She was quickly given the nickname 'Kangaroo', as she hopped about the ring and favored her legs to fight. When her sensei asked why, she calmly replied 'Cuz my legs are longer.' and she thus went back to sparring with a smile. After working with an instructor, she began to incorperate her hand strikes into the fight, instead of just using them in practice. But she still seemed to favor her long legs.
She was given her brown-black belt a few months before her sixteenth birthday, and was two steps away from becoming a junior black belt [she was underage at the time, and could not be given an adult black belt until sixteen]. At this time she expressed the interest in weapons training. Her parents decided to enroll her into a kendo school that opperated near the dojo. Her first choice was the shinai, a bamboo sword used for swordsmanship training and duels in a dojo. Her parents bought her the first shinai she ever had, and she keeps it to this day.
She learned the ways of the sword, practicing whenever she could in the backyard. Aside from her soccer, her karate took up most of her time, and it seemed her love of the sport was re-kindled upon receiving weapons training. Occasionally, she would spar hand-to-hand with her younger brothers, who were also in the martial arts training [the pair quit when the family moved].
After two years of practice, Sam became quite skilled with her shinai, and used it in one of her weapons katas, along with performing a kata of her own design without weapons, thus receiving her junior black belt. She also had to spar one of her teachers and score three points. Fortunately, her opponent was a teacher from another dojo. She managed to score one point off of him before he caught on to her trick, that she tended to favor kicks over punches. She managed to score three points on the sensei and was given two belts, one with her name embroidered on it, and the other one for her to wear in the dojo.
The move made Sam somewhat upset, but she managed to find a dojo to continue her training at near Central Park. Her parents drove her to lessons until she got her license at seventeen. She practiced as hard as she could and was given her adult black belt shortly after her sixteenth birthday. She is now an instructor of the intermediate and advanced classes, as well as a student in the kendo fighting class.
Upon making it to adult black belt, her parents bought her a bokken, made of a strong dense combination of various woods, and painted red, her favorite color. She has spent the last four years training to use that weapon and is quite skilled at using it, advanced in different moves and strikes. But her favorite way to spar is with her legs, still something she enjoys to this day.
Sam uses her shinai, bokken, and arms in order to make up for her depth perception problem. Her arms and bokken/shinai usually serve as a measuring tool to help her judge the real distance that a target is from her compaired to her actual perception, which is off by a few inches.
Soccer;
Since the age of five, when she played in the Micro-Mini's league, Sam has been into soccer. Her parents signed her up so that she would have a chance to make friends, and to help her get rid of her access energy [they would learn a few months later of her ADHD] Sam enjoyed the thrill of running and kicking the ball, and adored the cheers that she would get. As she got older, and the game became more about winning, she never really lost sight of her main goal; to have fun playing a game she adored.
While playing soccer during the fall and also doing karate was taxing on her social schedule, she didn't seem to mind much. Her karate training also seemed to help out with her soccer, as she was limber after coming to a game from karate class. She showed great promise as a striker on her teams, and when she was ten, her soccer team made it to the county championships. The team lost by two points, but they were still glad that they made it that far.
When she entered middle school, she would always opt to play soccer with her classmates during recess, and was somewhat upset at the fact that after sixth grade, she didn't get to go out and play anymore. She would love it whenever indoor soccer was played during gym time, and would practice in the summer in her backyard, anxious for the new season to start.
She had some trouble in soccer, with her blind eye proving to be a hinderence at times. Teams that they played again or rematched began to realize that she could hardly block a steal coming from her right side. However, thanks to the fact that the kids were mixed up into different teams every year, this prevented any team from becoming strong against hers. She also had issues taking passes on the right side, so her team would often let her know or kick the ball to her left.
After the move, she felt disconnected from her new high school, until her mother informed her that there was a soccer team, and that players were really needed. She joined up as soon as she could, hoping to make Varsity. She was accepted into the Varsity squad, but only because there weren't that many upperclassmen playing the sport. She would occasionally have to also play on the JV team, as they would need players every once in a while.
She stayed with the team all the way to her senior year, where she was selected as the MVP. She was somewhat upset that she wasn't offered athletic scholarships, but hasn't let that slow her down. She plays soccer sometimes at the local parks, usually by herself or with her close friends [who aren't really that good].
Languages;
Sometime during the end of her middle school Carree, halfway through her French Class, Sam thought it might be fun to go to other countries and teach the English Language to students, just as her teacher, Madame DeLemere was teaching to her class. This became her inspiration for her goal in life, and in her educational career. Shortly after moving to New York, Sam joined her local library and began to check out books about different countries, trying to figure out which she would want to teach in. At the time it was just a whim turned into a dream, but eventually it became something quite larger. After a few months of research and debate, she decided that Japan might be a fun try. The parent company of her father's current branch had a base in Japan, which interested her even more. Her father traveled to the country a few times, bringing back souvenirs for the family.
She also learned that teachers were well-respected in the country, which only interested her more. During her sophomore year in High School, she took a Japanese class, as she needed a credit of forging language to graduate. The class was small and quite difficult for her, but she decided to do all she could to learn Japanese. While the class was only basic and introductory, she spoke to her teacher about what she wanted to do with her life, and was offered tutoring and advanced lessons by Mrs. Kakei, her instructor. Apparently she had been born in Japan and traveled to America after learning English to teach students Japanese.
Sam soon began to check books out of the library on the Japanese language, and spent time learning it with Mrs. Kakei during her last two years of school. Moving onto college, she chose to make her major Education, with a minor in Japanese language and culture. For the past two years she has been taking classes on the history and culture of Japan, along with language courses as well as her educational requirements. She can speak Japanese quite fluently now, and she has no problem reading the different texts.
Singing;
Ever since she was able to speak, Sam has been singing. When she was seven, her parents bought her a small sixteen-key piano, which she used to make up songs about how annoying her little brothers were, or singing about how she didn't like homework, whatever was on her mind. She had a very sweet voice, and took after her paternal grandmother, whom according to her father, had a delightful singing voice in her prime. Sam adored singing and it was one of her favorite hobbies. She loved being in her elementary choir and even had a few solos during the concerts. Her voice was still not as cultured as some other child singers, but she had the potential to grow.
In middle school, she chose to sign up for choir, which was now an elective and not mandatory. She was eager to prove her abilities as she also joined the musical theater, participating all four years of her middle school career. Her choir instructor saw that she had potential, and offered personal training sessions to strengthen her voice. She was quite adept at making her voice loud, and often stood out from the choir, which sometimes worked against her. She had a powerful voice and needed to learn how to control it.
In seventh grade she made it into a select choir consisting of the best singers in the school. The group called itself 'The Chosen Few' and would perform during school concerts, doing a varied selection of musical numbers. Sam was found to be an alto, and was the base of the section, as the others in her group [three other girls out of the sixteen that made up the choir] were quite quiet. She still received solos and even participated in duets with one of the baritone singers.
After the move, she did her best to join the High School choir and was placed in the intermediate choir group, much to her displeasure. She had moved from a small town to a large suburb, and it was humbling to learn that she wasn't as great as she thought she was. She trained for two years, working hard on widening her range, and even changing to soprano whenever the group needed her volume. Eventually her range widened greatly, puberty assisting with the growth of her voice, making it more mature.
By her junior year, she was brought into the advanced choir and worked with the alto group, still helping the higher voices should her volume be needed. She was extremely pleased when her teacher complimented her on her growth and maturity of her voice, and she was ecstatic when she made the select choir [a group of six students] her senior year.
After graduation, singing took a backseat to her studies and work. But every now and again, you can hear her singing at a karaoke bar.
Motorcycle;
A year after she received her license, her father bought her a motorcycle, as it was something she mentioned she would love to have. She learned how to use it thanks to one of her father's employee's sons, who knew how to ride and operate motorcycles properly. She picked up on it rather swiftly and at eighteen and a half she applied for her motorcycle license, trading her car to her father as payment for her motorcycle and a few months of insurance payment.
She has been riding her motorcycle since, but usually locks it up and uses the busses during the colder months. She isn't that fond of public transportation, but she uses it when her motorcycle isn't practical. She enjoys riding around but isn't like some sort of stunt driver. She simply uses it to get from point A to point B. She takes great care of it and washes it once every two weeks.
Personal Items:
PDA;
Possibly her most important item is her PDA, which she also uses as her cell phone. Her PDA has everything important on it, her calendar, reminders, dates, times, basically her life. She received this on her twenty-first birthday, as a gift from her father. It is one from the electronics firm that her father manages and is the CEO of. A Simmerson LZG2500. Of course, such technical things are lost on Sam, who simply adores the PDA as it replaced her pen and paper that she constantly carried around, with dates and such written haphazardly on it.
The PDA has a three inch by two inch screen, in color, that responds to touch. The PDA itself is about six inches by five inches, and a light silver in color. The keypad takes up about two or so inches by four and a half inches, with numbers and letters, along with a shift key, enter key, basically set up like a normal basic keyboard, only in smaller form. The small keys can be tedious at times, but are large enough for Sam's thumb to access easily.
The PDA also has a stylus, which resembles a thin black pen. It is made of a high density plastic, not unlike the PDA itself, which is made of a high-quality plastic mixture. The stylus is black and fits into a special holder on the side of the PDA, which is about three quarters of an inch thick. There is an access port on the bottom that a USB plug can be put into to charge the PDA as well as hook it up to the USB port of a computer. The PDA holds songs but not images, which Sam doesn't really mind. The headphone jack is on the right side, along with a switch to turn the PDA on and off.
Sam usually carries the PDA in a special holster, that is black and made of plastic, that easily clips onto her belt. Although sometimes she likes to keep it in her pocket, depending on what kind of mood she is in.
Shinai [3];
Her first shinai was only made of bamboo and was about 45 inches long, with a six inch long hilt. It was made of four bamboo pieces, held together by three pieces of strong leather, with a plastic cap on the end, white in color. The shinai itself is a light brown in color, with a white hilt. It is old and rather fragile now, and Sam has taken to hanging it over her bed, as it is extremely light to her, weighing perhaps 400g at the most. She doesn't use it anymore, as it is quite worn and one of the bamboos slats is cracked.
Her second and third shinai were bought in a set, Sam saved up 120 dollars in order to buy them and have them shipped from Japan. They are quite different in size, and meant to be used together the longer one is known as the Daito, while the shorter on is the Shoto. The long one is about 47 inches long, with a ten inch long hilt. It seems to be made to be used with both hands. While the shorter is only about two and a half feet long, with a six inch hilt for one handed use. Both are made of a stained dark brown bamboo with three leather fastenings each and matching off-white hilts. The Daito weighs about 510g while the Shoto weighs about 290g. She usually uses them when she is teaching, and carries them to and from the dojo via a string that is tied around the ends of each shinai. She wears them on her back on her way home, unless she takes the bus, in which she carries them in her hands.
Bokken [2];
Her first bokken was a rather cheap one, made of various dense woods and stained a bold red color. It was about 36 inches long and didn't really have much of a hilt. It was made in a factory in America, somewhere in Michigan perhaps, and was bought at the dojo that she attended. It is a rather flimsy bokken, but it is good enough for practice. It weighs less than a pound. She doesn't really use it anymore, and saves it for when she wants to bring it into class and demonstrate how to use it.
Her favorite bokken is a more recent acquisition, something her father bought on a business trip to HQ in Japan. It is made of Japanese white oak, a superior breed of wood for a wooden sword. It was hand crafted and made with superb attention to detail. It rests easily in her hands, and is easy to lift and balances well. It is about three and a half feet long and stained black. It has a little nub of a guard marking where the hilt ends. The hilt itself is about ten inches long. The bokken itself weighs about three and a half pounds and was made for actual dueling of bokkens. It is only slightly scratched around the middle of the hilt. Sam takes this with her when she goes on walks, pretending it is a walking stick should a suspicious officer ask her what it really is. She is extremely fond of it and practices with it whenever she can. A name is painted into the handle, read in English as 'The Blade of Sun'.
School Ring;
Silver and worn on her pointer finger, this is the ring from NYU. Where once rested her High School Ring, she has since traded in for her college ring. The ring is relatively large for a female ring, and would be a smaller ring in the male styles. It has an oval ruby at the center, her birthstone, along with designs on the side. On one side is the university logo, a torch with four gouts of flame coming out of it. This is representative of the Statue of Liberty, one of NYC's must-sees. On the flip side is the symbol of education, an open book along with a pencil, nothing extremely special. Her name is curved around the bottom of the stone, and over the top of the stone 'NYU' is spelled out in initials. She loves her school ring, which is made of white gold, and it is one of her most precious possessions.
Motorcycle;
Sam owns a BMW K1200GT. She really could care less about how much horsepower it has, or how much gas it takes. All she really cares about is that it remains in once peice. The entire body is black in color with red pinstripes. It has a small rack installed on the back of the frame, one that she uses to strap down her pizza orders when she works, and she uses it to hold down anything that might be excess to her. The motorcycle is a single-seater, but she could get a sidecar if she really wanted. Her motorcycle has a few extra mirrors on the right side, which is something the state mandated she do due to her weak vision in her right eye.
Appearance: At a first glance, one would think that Sam was actually a boy. Starting with her head, she has an oval shaped face with high cheekbones and a slightly pointed chin, almost making her face heart-shapped. Her forhead is rather large, and she affectionately refers to it as her five-head at times. However, this is masked by her bangs, which are a deep black color, like the rest of her hair.
Her hair itself is long, and when worn down [which it rarely is] reaches down to the base of her back. She usually keeps her hair in a high ponytail and hardly does anything with it. She will style it should she have to attend a formal party for her father, or a dance for the school. She does her hair in a tight bun whenever she goes to sleep, because it drives her insane when it is in her face.
Her eyes are almond shaped and slightly larger than most people, they are easily noticed and very striking. She has long eyelashes that are black in color, like her eyebrows, which unlike most womens, are hardly maintained. Her eyes are a bold blue color, slightly darker around the iris. Her right eye seems unfocused and slightly askew. This eye legaly blind. When Sam was born, the doctors found that the retna never fully developed in the right eye, making it useless, as she can only see things in extremely fuzzy blurrs. She has adapted her lifestyle to fit this hinderence, and tends to turn her head more should she need to look over her right shoulder. This has also effected her soccer game, but not drastically [fortunately]. Her depth perception is off, but only by a few inches at the most. She has trouble telling how close things are to her, and tends to use her arms as rulers, mainly when she is fighting.
Her neck is slender, and her shoulders are slightly broader than most women her age. Her chest is rather small, at least in comparison to some of her friends, and is usually made smaller looking by the effect of one of her many sports bras. Her arms are quite long, and her wingspan streaches six feet, which is longer than her five feet and ten inches in height.
She doesn't seem to have a rather curvy figure, but her hips are slighty noticeable, should she wear the proper clothing. Her legs are extremely long, compaired to her short torso. She has a 36 inch inseam, and her legs are the powerhouse of her entire body. There is very little fat in her calves and thighs, which are toned and tight due to all the activity they get.
She seems to always have a smile on her face and has peirced ears, but she never wears earings. Her ears are of average size, and the peircings are on the lower part of the ear, she has two holes on each ear, the lower holes on the fat of the ear were put in when she was ten, and the higher ones were from when she turned sixteen.
Clothing: Her normal attire consists of baggy clothes, a favorite of hers. She likes loose fitting jeans or pants, preferably bell-bottomed or flared in some way. She was never a fan of tight-fitting clothes in the slightest, and likes to let her skin breathe. She dislikes shorts and wearing anything that shows of her legs. It is quite hard for her to find pants in her length, but she manages. Her favorite pair of pants are a faded pair of bluejeans, sized ten, that are long enough to drag on the ground when she walks. She adores having that feature in her pants, as it is so hard to find a pair that aren't floods.
When it comes to casual shirts, she has plenty of them. None of her shirts are plain, but all are a solid color with some sort of slogan or words or even an image on it. She adores expressive shirts, especially the ones with funny sayings. A fan of creativity, she is prone to buying plain shirts and writing her own slogans and such on them. She adores graphic tee shirts, but doesn't have any that are extremely inappropreate. A few have inuendos on them, but nothing outright graphic. She usually buys her shirts from the men's department, and wears a medium or small, depending on the brand of shirt. She prefers wearing tee shirts and has very few long sleeved shirts.
She loves sweatshirts, the longer the sleeves, the better. She has a collection of about twelve that she keeps in her closet, a few from her high school days, still large enough to fit over her hands, and a few recently purchased from the college store. She buys a few sizes too big for her, as she enjoys wearing overly large sweatshirts and hoodies. She loves long sleves because she can tuck her hands inside the sleeves, making them all the more warm on the colder months.
As for shoes, she isn't picky. She likes regular sneakers, but prefers more ambiguous styles. She isn't a fan of girly things, and likes more masculine shoes, usually off brand sneakers that last about a year before the tread wears out. She prefers cheaper sneakers over the more expensive brands, then again thats how she is with general clothes. She does own a few pairs of steel toed shoes, that she likes to wear whenever she helps her neighbors move heavy furnichure, or if she thinks it will match her outfit better.
As for undergarments, she wears a B cup bra [though she will swear to high heaven she is a C cup], but only has a few that fit her properly. Should she not have a clean bra available, she has plenty of sports bras that she wears [which only add to her more masculine appearance]. She doesn't seem to mind this at all though.
As for her dojo gear, she wears her karategi, which is the appropreate wear for both students and teachers. Her karategi is white with sleeves that come down to the middle of her forearm. The top comes down to a little above her tail bone and is held shut by her black belt. The pants are almost like workout pants and made of a medium weight fabric. The pants reach down to her feet and are white as well.
Occasonally, very rarely, she will wear formal clothes. She usually saves this for when she goes to her father's dinners or holiday parties. She hates wearing dresses yet does so for the sake of looking good for her father. Her dresses are usually long with short or no sleves, regardless of weather. They are of varying fabrics and colors and all bought for her by her father, despite her insisting she doesn't need them.
She is also fond of long dress coats, and will wear them occasionally with one of the very few dress shirts she has. She collects ties and has some of varying colors and styles. Should she become bored enough, she might dress up as a boy to go out and see if anyone might need help or to prevent small crimes like purse snatching. Doing things like that make her feel good about herself.
Personality: On the outside, Sam seems like a very amiable individual. She is almost always smiling and adores making others laugh. She can be a bit outrageous at times, and has occasional moments of immaturity, but she seems like a very warm person. She is very motherly, and loves children. In her spare time she babysits her neighbor's children, who seem to like her a lot. She is extremely creative and likes acting with the children, playing whatever they want to play.
Sam is very loyal to her ideals. She doesn't like those who prey on the weak, and hates bullies. She is very outgoing and bold in her actions. She has confidence and strength, both physically and mentally. She tries her hardest in whatever she can, although the effort put forth on a task usually reflects her interest in it. She is easily bored and shifts from one activity or idea to another quickly, and is at times forgetful.
She tends to be inept at remembering names properly, and often has to associate names with certain things, aside from faces, in order to remember them. However, if a name or face sticks out or is different from the others she has heard and known, she usually remembers it easier, or if it is a name she is familiar with, such as that of a family member, she would associate the person with the member of her family, thus making remembering them easier.
Dates and times are also something she fumbles at, and she seems to have a very weak concept of time, thinking that hours have passed when only a few minutes have and so on. Should she become involved in a task, completely immersed in it, she often forgets everything else in order to focus on the task at hand. She tries her best to remember important things, but if they don't stick in her mind she usually forgets them, which is why she puts reminders in her PDA, to make herself more efficient.
Her long-term memory is strong though, and once things stick in her mind, they are hard to forget. She seems to be quite skilled at remembering details about events, such as clothing or scenery. Of course she also tends to remember mundane details, things that aren't important or actually worthwhile to commit to memory, but for some reason she remembers them [like street signs, or random people on the street]
She is a very courageous person and is very chivalrous, often going out of her way to help people if she thinks they need it. She is quite bold and outgoing, and is not afraid to speak her mind in the least, something that has gotten her into trouble over the years. She tends to be quite talkative, almost to the point of annoyance, and this is something that tends to push people away.
Her mind works swiftly, and her speech reflects that. She often talks too quickly for people to understand, and has to be reminded to speak slower. She does this because she wants to get thoughts out of her head before she forgets them. Should she talk at a regular pace, it is not unusual for her to stop in the middle of a sentence and mention that she forgot what she was talking about.
Her forgetfulness does not stop at dates and names, she forgets many things easily, which is why her PDA is constantly in her possession. It is not unusual for her to pull it out suddenly and begin to enter information on it, be it a song stuck in her head that she might want to find lyrics too, or something she forgot to remember, anything really.
Sam is very headstrong and often jumps into situations without thinking things through first. This can also be seen in her speech, how she often speaks before thinking, which can result in a lot of trouble on her part. She is usually very energetic, and always seems to smile, even when the chips are down. She is constantly looking to the brighter side of things, always seeking that silver lining.
Sam can be arrogant at times, this shows when she speaks to someone she dislikes, or happens to interrupt a purse snatcher or mugger on the streets or in a back alley. She is someone who likes to talk big, in an attempt to put people off. She can really be playful and loves to banter with people, occasionally she enjoys the verbal duel with one of her classmates. She is quite witty and poetic at times, and is rather fond of working poetry into her standard way of speaking.
She doesn't have many close friends. Aside from Sachiko, there isn't really someone else whom she can refer to as her 'best friend'. It takes many months, even years of friendship for her to really open up to someone. She really fears rejection and not having friends and people that enjoy her company, people she can make laugh. One of her darkest fears is to be alone, like she was as a child before her move.
Unfortunately, Sam has a powerful temper, and can be very brash when this is unleashed. Fortunately she doesn't get angry to the point that she lashes out quite often. She can be annoyed by things, but once in a while someone will hit the wrong set of buttons and set her off. She does her best to be civil in the public setting, but sometimes she just gets so mad that she has urges, which makes her dash off and beat up the nearest pillow or soft object. She tries to use this to her advantage, trying to pinpoint what makes her angry and attempting to avoid such things.
Usually she harbors her anger and need for physical violence until she can get to her apartment or dojo, where she takes it out on a punching bag. She isn't one to condone violence, and sees her martial arts as a last resort in defense. She uses her skills to defend herself and others, protecting the weak against the overbearing strong. Should she wrongly unleash her anger on someone, she feels upset and guilty about it, and is prone to keeping to herself for a few days until the feeling passes.
As stated before, she does not condone violence. Whenever she happens upon someone being attacked or mugged or even assaulted, she always warns first, trying to talk to the antagonist to avoid conflict. She dislikes attacking people, but should someone come at her with a weapon, she does not hold back. It is her firm belief that if you try to use a weapon, you should deal with the consequences.
When it comes to romance, Sam has little experience. She does enjoy helping people with their problems though, and is quite skilled at giving out advice. She thinks that this is based on her third party perspective, as she doesn't usually have a side to stand on, and she can state her opinion without bias. Sam never really had a strong romantic relationship, she usually focused on her studies or her hobbies, keeping herself busy almost constantly. That's not to say she hasn't had crushes before. She is a woman, and like one she is apt to crush on persons. But she is rather shy when it comes to her romantic feelings, it is one of the few things she is reclusive about. While she does love her close friends, she has yet to find someone she would like in a romantic sense. She hasn't really found someone who she could really see herself with. Due to her lack of a relationship, she has also never had her first kiss. She is adamant about protecting that right and will go to great lengths to avoid someone stealing it.
Sam likes to keep her weaknesses hidden from others, she keeps her fears tucked away from the rest of the world, and manages to put on a brave face even when confronted by them. Some of her fears are rather droll, and based on the fact that she simply dislikes things to a degree that they freak her out, thus making her uncomfortable around them. She has few real fears, as she confronted most of her childhood fears head on, in an attempt to make herself stronger.
Once in a while she will select one of her fears to try and overcome. She has been doing such since she was a child, it all started with the monster in her closet. After a few years of fear, she gathered up herself and tried to confront this nightmare, learning that there were no such things as monsters.
Like other human beings, she also has nightmares, but very rarely since she has learned that nightmares are also created by her mind, much like dreams. As a child she often had a recurring nightmare of being in her bedroom, standing by her window. The window would open and a void would appear, starting to pull everything in her room into it, including herself. She would try to run away, but be unable to. This nightmare caused many a sleepless night until she was twelve, when she had the nightmare and dove right into the void, telling herself it was just a bad dream. She has applied the same tactics to other nightmares and rarely has them now.
She does her best to control her impulsive nature, taking her medication and meditating, but should she forget to take her pills [which has happened on more than a few occasions] then she is wild and very giddy, often entertained by the simplest things, and with a strange fondness for shiny objects. Her doctors have recently tested her again for her mental disorder, and found that she has a severe or borderline profound case of ADHD, and without medication she is extremely hard to control.
Occasionally, when she feels that she is being too calm about things, when the urge to be silly just builds up inside of her until she could burst, she goes home to her apartment and just has a few hours of silly activity, letting herself loose and being her hyperactive self. This has helped to cut down on her outbursts as well. She also works hard to control herself even with her medication, trying to cut back her dosage and control herself with her own mind, resisting the urges to be childish when such things are not appropriate. She is thankful she has her karate and sparring to help get her energy out.
She seems to have an abundance of energy, with plenty to spare and does her best to focus this on her activities and studies. Whenever she becomes bored with an important task [studying or working on a paper], she promises herself a little treat, perhaps a cookie, should she finish the task. This has helped her through many a term paper. Despite the reward system being something children do, she has found useful applications for herself even in adulthood.
Overall she can be hard to handle, but her friends have learned to love her no matter what. She is a rather entertaining person to be around, and when she goes out with her friends, she sometimes does ridiculous things to make them laugh and feel happy. Sam is someone who thinks everyone has a little happiness in them, and does her best to bring it out, especially in children. She is fond of making little kids smile with goofy antics and funny faces.
Sam has a great love of magic tricks, despite being rather haphazard with them. She does magic tricks for children sometimes, enjoying performing for them with small easy tricks that they find entertaining. She enjoys playing with imagination and can spin stories easily, almost effortlessly. Making things up on the spot, or improv, is something she is extremely good at, coming from experience with her drama clubs in the past.
Sam is not a serious person, she prefers to be playful and energetic. However, should Sam ever become serious, than that is a sign that she means business. Her friends know if something is wrong whenever she becomes suddenly quiet, and her characteristic smile fades from her face to become a thin line. She likes smiling, but she finds it hard to smile when someone is in danger.
History: Born on a warm summer's night in a hospital in the small town of Riverside, the young first born child of the Fricker family received the name Samantha Leigh. She was a rather energetic baby, always gurgling and cooing, she never seemed to cry much. Sam was a curious tot and enjoyed finding different ways out of her playpen to go about and try and explore the lower level of her family's split-level home. She would often chase after the puppy her parents had, named Snickers. The dog was a mutt, and no one really figured out what she was. But Sam loved her. She tended to get into trouble, crawling around everywhere and hiding in places, making her parents worry.
She spoke her first word at nine months, 'Daggy' a combination of the words 'daddy' and 'doggy'. Her parents paid a lot of attention to her, making home videos of her, taking pictures, dressing her up in costumes and pretty clothes. They showered their first born child with affection and love, attention and adoration. She was the first born child on her mother's side of the family as well, so her aunt and uncle paid attention to her as well.
She learned how to walk around one year, which allowed her to gain access to more places that she would hide in. Her favorite spot to hide was her toy box. She would toss all of the toys out and hide in there with her stuffed animals. She did this for several years, even after the arrival of her younger brother, though after he was born she did it more so for attention than for fun.
When she was two her younger brother came into the world. Raphael was a rather whiny baby, and Sam didn't seem to enjoy being around him. He was named after her grandfather, who had recently passed away just a few months before. She thought her brother was stealing away all her love and did many things to get attention, such as doodling all over the walls with marker, or badgering her parents for no reason.
It was at this time that she noticed her father began to spend more time away from home. When she asked why, he told her that he had an important job and had to provide for the family. Her father worked as a manager at an electronics company that was a subsidiary of a major electronics provider that answered to an even larger company that dealt with many different products.
Sam was a rather impulsive child and very loud, despite her mother telling her to be quiet and focus, she still had issues paying attention, let alone listening to her mother. Sam was always running around and it seemed the only thing that could get her to sit down and pay attention were her favorite cartoons, which her mother began to tape so she could play them whenever Sam got out of hand.
At the age of five another baby came into her family, her youngest brother Jacob. He was a pudgy baby and didn't really cry much, but he didn't laugh a lot either. Sam really didn't pay him much mind, but Raphael took to him like a bee to a flower, and a few years later, Jacob was Raphael's shadow. Her fifth year was also important due to the fact that her kindergarten teacher recommended she take a test for ADHD, which she showed symptoms of having.
She doesn't seem to remember the test clearly, but does recall that she was put in a room and played with a bunch of different adults. The results came a few weeks later. She did have ADHD and she was prescribed medication to help control her behavior. Things seemed to go well for her from that point on for her kindergarten days, she would get compliments from her teacher about being able to pay attention so well.
Elementary school kicked in and Sam began to show signs of hyperactivity still. She would be loud an obnoxious during class and even at recess, often forcing other kids away from her. She did mange to make a few friends that she played with only at recess, she never really saw them outside of school. The group would go to the small wooded area and play games, pretending to be superheros and such.
Around this time Sam started taking karate. She would show off sometimes for her friends until one of her older classmates from the dojo spotted her and told her that showing off wasn't the right thing to do. He was a third grade student, and his name was Nick. He was a belt or so ahead of her, so she looked up to him in a way and agreed to not show off so much. Sam had difficulties at first when taking Karate. She found that she could not block strikes as well as other students, mainly those coming from the right side. The teacher drilled her on this for a few months until her father mentioned that his daughter had very little vision in that eye. She would have to turn her head a lot more often, and it was a very veaunerable spot when she began taking sparring classes.
Sam quickly left elementary school, but dealt with an emotional blow when her dog died near the end of fourth grade. After a big hissy fit, Sam seemed alright, she was smiling again, even though she was still sad. She learned an important life lesson, and something that would keep her smiling for the rest of her life. She found that things weren't always as bad as she thought they were. She looked on the brighter side of things and found her smile once more. She knew that Snickers was in a better place and wasn't suffering anymore.
Over the years Sam had grown stronger, not only due to her karate, but due to the physical work out she would get when playing soccer. Sam had a particularly interesting incident at the end of her fourth grade year playing soccer. It seemed that a ball whapped her on the right side of her face, knocking her out cold. The ball had been kicked at the goalpost by one of the midfielders [a husky girl with a powerful kick] the ball rebounded and hit her hard in the face. It was at this point she realized she would have to be more aware of her sorroundings, mainly the area involving the large blind spot at her right side. At the start of fifth grade, she was asked to help referee a children's game for the soccer league she played in as a little kid. She would spend every other weekend watching little kids play the game she loved so much.
Middle school was a big change for Sam. The friends she liked to hang out with at recess were now in different classes, leaving Sam alone and alienated, as her classmates didn't seem to favor her hyperactive behavior. She was starting to get more out of hand so her mother changed her medication, putting her on a new pill that would help control her better. The doctor said that her body was getting used to the levels of medication she had, so the only way to make things work was for her to take a new medicine.
Sam had an unfortunate incident involving a classmate. The young girl seemed to want to be friends with Sam when no one else did. Sam enjoyed the girls company and was thrilled to have someone to sit with during lunch, as she spent the first few weeks eating by herself. She would talk a lot at lunchtime, and follow the girl around during recess. The young girl's name was Jennifer, and Sam saw the girl as her first true friend. Jen was in the same class as Sam as well, which made things even better, in her opinion.
A shock came when around the middle of the school year, Sam received a note from Jen, telling her that she didn't want to be friends anymore, and that Sam was extremely annoying. The note went on to say that Jen had only been friends with Sam because she felt bad for her, and that the reason she didn't have any friends was because she was loud-mouthed and never shut up. This came as a very hard blow to the pre-teen, who had grown up barely knowing any real friends. She went to the nurse and complained of a stomachache, faking illness to go home and cry. Since then she has been very wary about what kind of friends she makes, she seems to anticipate that she would be thrown aside at the drop of the hat.
What kept her smiling in middle school was choir and the drama club. She adored doing musicals, and really didn't mind having a small part. She did like attention, but she had learned that everyone would have their time in the sun, and hers just hadn't come yet. She participated in the four years of drama club, from fifth to eighth grade, eventually getting the lead role in the school's production of The Wizard of Oz in the eighth grade.
That was when the move came. Her father announced shortly before her graduation that he had gotten a big promotion for his years of service to the company, and was being put in charge of the electronics branch as a whole. She was excited for her father, but worried slightly about leaving. She had soccer and karate, as well as choir here. But she had to accept the fact that she was leaving the place she knew so well for a strange unknown. The one thing that made it all better was that she was going to get a fresh start.
On the day of her birthday her family moved to upstate New York, to a nice home that was larger than the split level they lived in. Sam was excited to have her own room, and her brothers were glad that they didn't have to share a room, like they did in the old house. Sam had grown apart from her brothers, who seemed to enjoy bothering her and teasing her whenever she tried to talk to them. Jacob did whatever Raphael did, still like a shadow to the older brother he admired.
Raphael was a smart student and had always been the brightest kid in the family. Jacob tried to emulate that by working as hard as he could in school. He was a B student, not really fond of studying though. Sam was an A-B student, and was grateful for that.
Sam was overjoyed when she finally hit puberty at sixteen. She was so fed up with other girls having figures and her being stuck as the late bloomer. She was quite aggravated when she only had a small chest, but took it in stride, doing her best to look at the bright side [at least she didn't have huge back breaking boobs].
Sam soon picked up where she left her life, joining up at the local dojo, and catching up with some of the things she needed to in order to gain her adult black belt. She was well known her Freshman year, due to her involvement on the school's soccer team. She enjoyed the thrill of being able to let her energy out by playing a game she loved, and made friendships on the soccer team.
But her first real friend came into her life her sophomore year, when she was in Japanese class. Her teacher, Mrs. Kakei, told her she had potential, and invited her for advanced lessons. That was when she met Sachiko, Mrs. Kakei's daughter and her first real best friend. Sachiko and Sam had so much in common, they shared a love of cartoons, and they both liked learning about different countries. Sachiko was born in America, but raised learning Japanese and English. The pair became extremely close, almost like family.
Sachiko and Sam were like two peas in a pod. Whenever the pair could spare time, they would hang out together, bothering their parents to drive them to each other's houses until they were old enough to drive themselves. The rest of her school years seemed so much more bearable to Sam after she met Sachiko. She made another friend her Junior year, a girl named Elizabeth. The three of them formed a strong bond and deemed themselves best friends. Elizabeth decided to go to Penn State for her college education, while Sachiko and Sam chose NYU.
Sam was glad to share a dorm with Sachiko their freshman year, when she made new and even more entertaining friends in her college classmates. She and Sachiko were both lucky to have the same major in Education. The two still did everything together, and when Sachiko managed to get a job working at the pizza place, all Sam had to do was ask and she managed to wrangle Sam the delivery job that was open for a part-time worker.
Since she didn't really get paid much for her work at the dojo, Sam was glad to take on the other job, and used her motorcycle to deliver pizza, mainly using the job in the warmer months, since it wasn't safe to cycle in the winter when it snowed. She and Sachiko eventually got an off-campus apartment, that her parents agreed to help pay for if Sam can keep her grades up.
