| "brightside chris" |
[Mar. 22nd, 2008|11:50 pm] |
Ed Ray met Candy Rowley in the winter of 1975. Ed worked a dead end job in insurance, though he never stayed with one company for more than a year on account of his drinking problem and utter lack of work ethic. Candy was a cocktail waitress and sometimes-dancer at a club and bar called Baby Dolls; they were acquaintances at first before Candy's boyfriend got rough with her in the parking lot one night; Ed beat him into the ground and the two began dating, moving in together shortly thereafter. Candy found out she was pregnant in the summer of 76, and Christopher Robert Ray was born on April 26th, 1977. Neither of his parents were very good at parenting, and as a young child he was dragged to work with his mother and seated at the bar where his mother worked whenever his father was temporarily holding a job. There were three different abduction attempts and one close call in which a man lured a four year old Chris into the bathroom. Luckily, the bouncer to the club needed to use the restroom and heard the little boy crying. Chris didn't go to preschool, and by the time he got to kindergarten was far behind his classmates, having to learn his numbers and letters while the other kids were learning to read and write.
His intelligence was beyond what one would expect from parents like that, though, and Chris caught up by the end of the school year, showing aptitude for reading and a thirst for knowledge. His linguistic skills were outstanding; teachers encouraged him to read to expand his vocabulary and in the second grade, his reading, vocab, and comprehension standardized test scores were at the 12th or Post-12th grade level. He scored in the 95th percentile nationwide, and would've been eligible for the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program, except that his parents refused to rise early on a Saturday to take him to the test. Chris picked up a paper route in the fifth grade, and because his parents barely noticed him, they certainly never noticed his absence. In addition, he worked odd jobs for other families in the neighborhood - mowing lawns, doing dishes, cleaning gutters, raking leaves, cleaning garages and attics. He used the money he made from these ventures to save up for a Pee Wee football uniform and got his fifth grade computer science teacher to show up at the informational meeting - something neither of his parents would be willing to do. He played quarterback, and was extremely talented, giving him a much needed outlet from the constant humdrum of working, school, and being grossly ignored at home.
In the 7th grade, Chris came home to find his parent's apartment empty and a note saying the last month's rent was paid. Chris stayed there for the next two months, living off a school cafeteria meal plan and what little he made from odd jobs around the neighborhood before finding an eviction notice on the door. Ashamed of being left behind, he began to shower in the school locker room and sleep inside the gymnasium. He lived this way until the 9th grade, when the high school football coach came to see him about why he wasn't trying out for the school team after breaking so many records in the Pee Wee leagues. Chris blew him off at first, too scared to let anyone know his situation. Halfway through his freshman year in high school, Chris was caught beneath the bleachers with his sleeping bag and his duffel full of clothes. At first, he was sent into the foster care system but the football coach - a man named Dan Alexakis - stepped forward with his wife and two kids, asking for legal guardianship. It took about a year before Chris realized these people were vastly different from the only family he'd previously known, and let himself feel settled. In his sophomore year he made the varsity football team, and he began to think seriously about college. He'd kept his grades up through it all, finding that his aptitude for school was at times the only thing he had to feel good about, and in his senior year he had offers from USC, UCLA, TSU and Notre Dame. At 18, he changed his surname to Alexakis to fit in with the rest of his adopted family, who had legally taken on responsibility for him as a minor. Because of his strong Christian faith, Chris decided to go with Notre Dame. He played college ball there for four years, and while he wasn't QB1 until he was a sophomore, he saw some time on the astroturf as a freshman when the senior quarterback injured his knee. He flourished in college, loving the intellectual atmosphere and being surrounded by people on his level, and he did a fine job of balancing school and sports. As a senior, he was heavily recruited by the NFL - the Buffalo Bills were especially interested - but Chris decided instead to attend grad school. He studied Psychology at Penn State.
Upon graduation, he began speaking to middle school students in his spare time and began to write his novel, The Science of Selling Yourself Short, which tells about the importance of having internal self esteem, explains the psychological process of believing or not believing in one's self, and how it's important to have faith even when the odds are against you and everyone else has deemed you a lost cause. It drew from his own experiences and the book was published when he was 25. Almost eight years later, it's still quite popular and Chris has made a career of traveling the country and giving motivational speeches. |
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