“HELP ME !” Short Story By Federico Quintana, 2012
The young 12 years old deaf boy, Tim, and he was thinking about transferring to the oral school because he was shamed of his identity, denying his own culture and language. He was mainstreamed into the public school. His math regular Education teacher found out Tim’s plan and wrote a note to him that he should be transferred to the deaf school instead of oral school and use FULL ASL. Tim laughed at the teacher and thinking the oral is better than ASL because he wanted to be fit in the hearing peers. A few nights before he is officially been transferred to the oral school and while he was deeply asleep on his bed. He felt cold air blew his face as he peeked his eyes open … He was about having the worst nightmare ever he encountered in his life.
The deaf ghost, Laurent Clerc, leaned toward Tim’s face and Clerc signed “ASL USE THIS YOUR NATURAL LANGUAGE  … ORAL SCHOOL GO DON’T …. DEAF SCHOOL YOU GO WILL…HAPPY”. Tim was paralyzed with fear and tried to reach his arm out to touch Clerc’s body but he is waving in the air because Clerc is a ghost. Tim got really frightened and yelled at him to get away and do not want to sign ASL. Clerc’s ghost apparition became red because he is very upset that Tim is rejecting ASL and his own Deaf identity. Clerc signed back to Tim, “CURSE YOU IF USE VOICE BOTH YOUR HANDS EACH FINGER DISAPPEAR WILL”
Tim replied in his frightened and unarticulated voice, “What?!!”, one of his little pinkie disappeared and he became really freaked out. Tim screamed “Why? Why? No, no! Help me! Help me!” and 8 of his fingers were all gone!
Tim only had one last thumb left and he figured a way to break the curse by using sign language. Tim shakily signed “HELP-ME” with his one thumb and other hand without fingers and Clerc smiled back to him. All of the sudden, the door opened, Clerc disappeared and left Tim signed frozenly “HELP-ME” as he sat on his bed. His deaf father signed “YOU OK ? WHAT WRONG?” And Tim signed back “ORAL SCHOOL DO NOT WANT GO … DEAF SCHOOL I WANT GO…. PLUS I THINK…. NOW ASL I LIKE”. “YES FINALLY” signed deaf father as he hugged Tim tightly.