J. Parrish Lewis

The Smoke Alarm is (NOT) going off!

When I was in high school, I spent a lot of time doing artwork. My last two years of high school, I spent hours everyday in the art classroom working on one project or another, totally immersed in my work. One day I turned around and everyone was gone.
I walked to the other section of the art department and still no one. I walked out into the hallways. Still no one there. I looked in the gym, thinking I had missed something, and still no one was there. Classroom after classroom was empty, and so I headed for the door to go outside.
My heart thudded in my chest: a row of Bomb Squad officers lined up not to far away from me, peering at me over their guns. And behind them, the entire student body and teachers.
Apparently someone had called in a bomb threat and no one bothered to tell the deaf guy that the school was evacuating.

Anyway, fast forward years later. [Read more →]

About Deaf Aliens

Last night, my roof was ripped right off the house in an instant, which was unpleasant because it let the mosquitos in. The culprit was this silvery and polka-dotted spaceship that had landed on the house and apparently has a vacuum setting. Unpleasant. Fortunately the roof must have jammed it, because the whole thing shut off before we were sucked out of our beds into oblivion.

I woke up immediately from the rush of the cold night air. My wife stirred, but I told her, “Go back to sleep. I’ll handle this.” So she rolled over and pursued the interrupted dream. My little girl was still asleep. Nothing wakes her, not even a spaceship sucking the roof off our house. You’d think she was deaf, but she’s not.

I flipped the lights on in my living room and peer outside the window. Dark. I didn’t see anything.

So I went outside and I looked at the top of the house and confirm it is indeed a spaceship. Very cliche spaceship: Disc-like, silver, bright flashy lights. Pieces of roof jammed in its underbelly. Only the polka dots were unexpected.

“YO!” I yelled. “What’s the big idea?” [Read more →]

Deaf + Screen-free Day + 2010 = Harder Than It Should Be!

Recently, I posted a blog about my self-imposed challenge to have a day without screens, meaning no computers, pagers, TVs, or Videophones. For me, that day was yesterday.

It was much harder than it should be, and shows how addicted I am to the internet in particular. I believe that my being deaf contributed to how difficult it is. After all, if I were hearing, I could have used radio to listen to the news or a cell phone (not counting ones like iPhones that are so intelligent that the next line might as well be called iTerminate) to call friends or family to chat. [Read more →]