T.J. Parker was a happy-go-lucky sort of 20 year-old guy who liked to horse around with friends after a hard day working as a roofer. He and his friends went fishing one May evening in 1991, catching mullet in a gill net and just fooling around as young guys are known to do.

When they impulsively decided to dive off the end of a pier to rinse off before going home at 10:30 p.m., it turned out to be what T.J. calls the biggest mistake of his life. The depth of the water was tragically misjudged: it was only two and a half feet deep.

He woke up a few days later in the hospital, with a respirator helping him breathe, and two vertebrae -- the C1 and C2 -- fractured, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. He was to spend the next 11 months in the intensive care unit and another three months in the rehab center.

He had to depend on someone else to do almost everything for him for the next five years. Even little things we take for granted such as turning lights on and off, changing TV channels, talking on the phone, and writing letters... all became impossible for him under the circumstances.

Then Max arrived on the scene and his whole life began to change. The five years between 1992 and early 1997 had been spent mostly watching television or listening to the radio. T.J. wanted to be more independent and not have other people constantly having to do simple things for him.

He found a program put out by the State of Florida Vocational Rehabilitation that paid for "Max," his computer. Max opened up a whole new exciting world for T.J., including an education in computer programming.

T.J. started out with a computer that delighted him just because it could do things for him based on voice commands without involving another human being. He now does that on a daily basis and much more, most recently using Max to study up-to- the-minute programming skills that are used on the Internet, such as Active-X and Visual Basic.

Max has become an indispensable part of T.J. Parker's life. T.J. loves to give Max orders, and exercises his voice by hollering orders..."Max, change the television channel!" "Max, open the door!" and "Max, fax that letter!" And Max does each and every command perfectly, and sometimes does some of the commands over and over again, but never complains.

Max is a unique machine: an IBM compatible multimedia PC and designed specifically to assist physically challenged users. The system was developed by Multimedia Designs , and the Head Mouse was designed by Origin Instruments .

Max is also capable of environmental control, as it can raise or lower thermostat temperatures, and control electrical appliances such as lights, televisions and garage doors, and even infrared machines such as a VCR. T.J. also uses Max to answer the telephone.

When T.J. uses a mouse on his computer, it's a whole different breed of mouse from the type we might use. T.J.'s mouse is called a Head Mouse, which fires an infrared beam to the small conductor dot which sits on T.J's nose.

Now, small head movements are enough to operate the computer. With this dot, T.J. can do many things, such as play games with his 9-year-old daughter, type 25 words a minute, dial a telephone and even design and code web sites.

He's done several Web pages for local organizations, such as for the local Friends of the Disabled and several others for one of the local Internet Service Providers, Amaranth.

Amaranth gushes over his work, and as a visitor to their site, I have to add my gushes and say I like the way he designed the site. He has a natural artistic ability which will help him as he grows in web site design.

T.J. puts in a lot of work time at the computer, especially when he's studying. So, when I asked him what he likes to do for recreation, he had no hesitation in saying, "Well, on Sundays, all I do is watch the Stock Car Races! And my favorite driver is Bill Earnhart, of course!"

Thanks to Max and the Head Mouse, T.J. Parker has a great future ahead of him doing just about anything he wants to do with computers. The creators of Max have even begun to call T.J. when things go wrong on the systems belonging to their other clients. T.J., more often than not, is able to figure out what happened to crash the computer. So, he's become an ad hoc tech support person for other Max systems, as well.

Asked what he would most like to pass on to others who are quadriplegic, he says, "One of the best things they can do for themselves is to develop a lot of patience with themselves. You get frustrated a lot, but if you don't give up, and instead keep trying, and keep being patient with yourself, you'll see progress every day."