1997
Chasey Boy Part Trey: This Mullet Will Rise Again!
I AM BACK! I CAN DO THIS! GO GO GO CHEF GO! YES YES YES YES! I WILL WIN! I FEEL GREAT! I CAN DO THIS! ERRRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!!
Yeah....so it has been 3 MONTHS since I last worked on these pages, but I promise you that I have a good reason for this hiatus! The most important and RARE picture(s) that will be included on this page DID NOT EXIST (sorta!) until a few weeks ago! You're probably wondering how this could be possible, since these pages mainly contain photos taken during the year they correlate to, but stay with me! These photos (the two most notable being above and below this text!) were LOST TO TIME in the many, many, many, many layers of STUFF located at 1193 Floydfield USA, but around last May or so I found these NEGATIVES while excavating one corner of my house which (by some MIRACLE) contained these INCREDIBLY RARE photos from 1997 that will form the CRUX of the INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT "ChaseFloydInc Foundational Story" on this PAGE!
After all of that HYPE you are probably wondering just what this INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT "ChaseFloydInc Foundational Story" IS, and as always THE CHEF does not intend to DISAPPOINT his audience during the TELLING OF IT! SO, LET US BEGIN!!!!
The main component of this story is actually quite simple to identify. These two pictures (the two main ones from the Lost 97 Negatives!) hold A LOT of little details that I will go over in great detail, but the main thing you will likely notice is that I have VASELINE all over my FACE! Now before you go running away in fear of where this story is going, allow me to EXPLAIN all that you need to KNOW!
I am a complex being. Anyone who knows me would have to agree with that $ci Fact! Throughout my life though my "complexities", as we shall call them, have led me to having several different "somethings" that I have had to deal with. In fact, as I sit here and WRITE this I am dealing with a handful of these RIGHT NOW! What do I mean by this term "somethings" though, you ask? Well, how can I put this in a way that makes me not seem like I am secretly CRAZY IN THE HEAD...? Hmmmm....
Now, let me just say that I have never been diagnosed with anything "in the head" (mainly because I do my best to AVOID leaving my HOUSE!), and in all honesty EVERYONE is probably little screwy up there, but I am quite confident that if I were to take a visit over to the psychiatrist that I would leave with a LIST (oh please no more LISTS....NO MORE LISTING CHASE! NO MORE!) of "idiosyncracies"! Throughout my life I have had several, one after the other, "obsessive compulsive behaviors" manifest themselves with great frequency in my daily life. ONE BY ONE though I have CONQUERED, DESTROYED, AND OVERCOME each ONE!
Writing about this now makes those that have been dealt with seem far less CONTROLLING than they were at the time, but the inescapable fact that there has (to this point) always been another one lined up on the docket reminds me just how difficult these things are to deal with! My first one of these "things", which is what I guess we will now call them, was a very odd "thing" for a child to continually do; LIP LICKING!
Yeah...that's right...LICK LIPPING! I mean, LIP LICKING! I am not ashamed or embarrassed (about anything, really, since everything can be used to LEARN from and as a TEACHING EXPERIENCE/OPPORTUNITY!), but this was as far as I can tell my first "thing". For probably over a year or so when I was 3-4 years old I just could not (or would not) stop compulsively LICKING my LIPS! I would do this similar to how a person bites their nails (See 2007-2008 Chase Floyd for more on this!) in that it led to a Positive (not the good kind!) Feedback loop in which my lips would become drier and drier with each lick, thus necessitating more licking to make them feel less inflamed again!
I do not know how or why this particular "thing" started, BUT IT HAD TO END! Fortunately my parents had a PLAN to help me overcome this! The PLAN was to take a little vacation with my father up to NIAGARA FALLS to help him on one of his construction jobs! While there the CHANGE of ROUTINE would, according to the plan, SNAP ME OUT OF IT! Well, that and the additional plan to smear ENORMOUS GOBS of VASELINE all over my face while I slept and stained the (likely already) filthy Hotel Bed we were staying at!
While this plan may have seemed a bit "out there" it SO TOTALLY WORKED! I was cured of this mental affliction after only a couple of days, and while the Hotel Bed, Sheets, Blankets, Pillow Cases, and Walls were completed ruined and permanently stained the likely extremely confused Hotel Staff never sent us any bills or anything so it was a WIN-WIN!
Do I write with too many RUN-ON sentences? Perhaps this will be my newest "thing" to obsessively worry about! Any who, not only did this trip allow me to overcome my first real CHALLENGE in life, CHALLENGE in this case meaning accomplishing the ability to be able to DO something that I simply COULD NOT DO in my previous state (STOP LIP LICKING!), it also helped provide me with a lifelong example of how being willing to go to EXTREMES every once in a while can PRODUCE a POSITIVE RESULT! In other words, this trip was my first real GLIMPSE into my FUTURE of allowing things to go awry and then fixing them by GOING TO EXTREMES to turn things around and to turn a weakness into STRENGTH!
If this sounds confusing, well, maybe I need to go back and revise what I wrote a bit! It makes sense to me though, so let's keep this "ChaseFloydInc Foundational Story" GOING! A bunch of other stuff happened during this trip to Niagara Falls, with the main things being related to some of my FAVORITE things in LIFE! Let me note though that while here I essentially got a mini-course in SCIENCE, specifically the SCIENTIFIC METHOD, since the whole Vaseline-Face thing was essentially my first SCIENCE EXPERIMENT! The results were quite positive as well, helping further BRIGHTEN my interest in SCIENCE!
Anywho, this OTHER STUFF though mainly involved THE WATER FALLS (they looked SO COOL and helped inspire my love and interest in NATURE and EARTH SCIENCE!), HOCKEY (I have never actually played Ice Hockey, but I became a BIG FAN of watching the sport during this trip, which would then lead to #13 and to this point my BIGGEST THING I have had to deal with...), BURGER KING (also a part of that aforementioned BIGGEST THING....), ADVENTURES IN ABANDONED RETAIL FACILITIES (kinda sorta a part of that BIGGEST THING and definitely its OWN THING, but also a more regular interest!), THE MIGHTY DUCKS (yet again a part of that aforementioned BIGGEST THING....but also something that is just SO COOL), TOYS (yeah....I know....BIGGEST THING....its literally STARIN' right at meh!), and of course POWER RANGERS (okay so SORTA a part of that BIGGEST THING but also a part of a much, MUCH GRANDER picture for the future which shall only be HINTED upon for the time being!), all can (sorta) be seen in the now famous (and once lost) 1997 CHAY PICS!!!!
Have I lost you yet? Well, if none of this makes sense DON'T WORRY! I guess what I am trying to say is this! 1997 was the year in which I possibly acquired but definitely overcame my first "thing". There have been many "things" since this one, but one-by-one I have continued to overcome each one! It has not been easy, but since 97 I have always figured something out! I thus have confidence that I will continue to do this, and someday I will be sans "things"! Going a bit to EXTREMES to overcome that THING though would be a valuable lesson I would keep with me, and by channeling my latent willingness to go to EXTREMES I have been able to ACCOMPLISH some pretty AWESOME, CHALLENGING THINGS!
1997 was also a year in which my interests in SCIENCE, a handful of other things I still enjoy, and the variety of EPIC ACTION TV STUFF I was obsessed with increased and permented (is this even a WORD?!) into my mind. Foundational Ideas for how I would continue to include all of these interests into my life thus began to form (some of them subconsciously without me even knowing: was this, see ABOVE and BELOW, a SIGN?!), along with a Foundational Belief in myself that I could figure out solutions to any problem I might face with a little bit of SCIENCE and a whole lot of BELIEF in myself! This changed how I viewed myself, and while others may not have been able to envision the fire beginning to burn within I SO TOTALLY did! And it was this fire that allowed ME to see the ME I wanted to be and KNEW I could be; a SO TOTALLY AWESOME MAN of SCIENCE, ACTION, and CHALLENGE (who also happens to have had to overcome multiple "things" throughout his life, the most current one being seen in my need to include the following, seemingly pictures from the Lost 97 Negatives!)!
1998 - New House, New Job; Chase Starts School, did not go to prek!