Here's some irony. The person I'm about to talk about is deaf, and I'm going to dedicate a song to them. Guess which song. NO! Don't cheat! Just guess. Breathe. Okay, now look. Aww... I'm the dumb. It's not like they're ever going to know how lame it is and how little thought I put into this, so relax. It's like it never happened.

Okay.

I grew up around deaf people. I'd say the ratio of english-speaking and ASL-"speaking" people was about even (with a handful of ESL's in there). I grew up in a technically bilingual house...

I knew a lot of other families with deaf people. In one case, they lived the town/city over and had a son my sister's age, about 16 years older than me, who I'm going to call redmark. I saw him around. Sometimes we spent time over his family's place.

Over a few year period, most of my family in that area moved. I don't remember the circumstances, but he moved with the rest of us. So, when I moved, he was still sort of there.

One year (or something) we all lived in the same house. My immediate family, my sister's family, and him. It was pretty packed - no quiet, no privacy, you couldn't "own" anything. At first it was cool because there were so many people and things going on at a time that I would disappear completely and I got a LOT of freedom I wouldn't have gotten living with just my mom, and it was "interesting"... but I need to own things and have control of my immediate environment. I started properly liking boys about that time and living with that many people, also, was not good for this. Even with my inclination for being sneaky, seriously, where are you going to go? No hay escapatoria.

I wasn't sure about redmark about this time. He liked the boys in the family more than the girls for sure. He was a video game and movie nerd and without fail if something came in the house, it would go straight to the boys. Depressing when I was good at video games, probably better than they were, but a lot of the time could barely access them due to their monopoly.

One thing that was universal among us older kids was that redmark would take us out on his job sometimes. He worked late at night and would have us help out. There was no supervision, at least not after a certain point, and he was deaf... so there was a lot of screaming. Absolutely necessary. Probably the best thing about living with deaf people is that you can do things at whatever volume, no consequences unless it somehow vibrates the floor/walls in which case they know it's "too loud" and flip out about "the neighbors". But yeah... in the middle of the night, at his work, there was no real way for him to gauge what we were doing. Even if/when he knew, I don't think he cared. My niece and/or nephew and I would do a lot of stupid shit, little acts of terrorism. It was great.

The following year my mom and I moved, and he became our roommate. I finally got to actually play the fucking video games, and he got a new system that I loved, and very much geeked out on that for the time it was around and he was still renting video games. We lived about two blocks from a video game rental place and the password to rent games if we didn't bring mark's card was my name.

Also he got another job, and there was less terrorism at this place but we kids got to do a lot of shit that we absolutely wouldn't have been able to do any other way because all of our parents were cheap/poor and mine was strict/paranoid. I still have remnants hanging around, random objects reminding me of that place that no longer exists that felt somewhat like freedom.

And of course there were shitty times, like how difficult it is getting into an argument with a deaf person. Mostly I tolerated him as he wasn't nearly as annoying as some of the other deaf people I grew up with, but yeah... Free flowing language doesn't come easy when there's a language barrier. I remember sitting with my niece and not-oldest nephew once and we dared each other to spit in his drink sitting on a table as revenge for something he said or did to us. I think my nephew did it... and he drank it.

LOL. He used to make this noise all of the time... It isn't going to translate by text at all and I'd be better off showing, but... he had no idea how loud/obnoxious he was. He'd constantly buy soft drinks and sit there drinking all day, playing with the straw, making that hollow plastic sound. In between this squeaking it would be extremely enthusiastic drinking, complete with weird, over-the-top slurping and a post-drink sigh, "tAHHH". It was REALLY funny. If I ever decide to do videos for this blog of myself, ask me to do a demonstration... It's too funny.

I guess I could do a demonstration of all the weird shit I heard growing up...

Anyhow.

Redmark moved away and got married and had lots of kids. It's been a bit over ten years since I saw him last. Dumb.

Actually, you know what would be a better song, since he was present when I bought my first CD ever? ... Yeah. You're not going to "get" this. If anyone knows or figures out the "joke" here, I apologize for this being lamer than the previous song.