A little help vould be nice, požalujsta (Amos)

[deedogma]

Being the newest teacher at Hammel was proving to be more difficult than Natasha had anticipated. The classes were smaller, but each student needed far more individual attention than the average. She'd never considered her native tongue to be difficult and wondered if offering tutoring would help the floundering students.

It took her a while to come up with the fliers to offer tutoring and extra help after class, and it irked her that it had to be on her own dime and on her own time. Tasha was stubborn though and once she'd set her mind to something, she would accomplish it. Now that she had the two sets of fliers, staplers, staples and elastic bands, she just need a pair of hands to help her.

Someone tall enough to put the fliers up high, large enough hands for the fliers and strong enough to keep reaching overhead to help her get these things up and seen in time to get home by six.

She set down the heavy box filled with supplies and paper and scanned the students in the halls. Her blue eyes roamed and rejected each one in turn, finding a flaw to the perfect helper. The other important thing was that they should look obedient and willing to take her direction. These American students were so different from the Kocher school she'd gone to.

'No that girl's too short, he's got small skinny hands, and is that green hair?! Niet!' Her gaze lit on a dark haired teen who had the height, large hands and a kind if somewhat befuddled expression on his face.

As Amos approached, she flashed her model worthy smile and gestured him over to her.

"You there!" Natasha called out to Amos,"The vun vith the cute dark curls! Come here požalujsta." (please)

[Amos Freeman]

Amos, who had been looking forward to going back to his dorm for several hours of peaceful, uninterrupted sleep, was caught off guard by the heavily accented shouting. He made eye contact with the woman -- she looked not much older than him, but she was, somehow, radiating an aura of authority, even through her bright smile -- and pointed to himself dumbly.

"Er," he said, stopping in front of her. "Sorry, me, d'you mean?" He looked around just to be sure. Nobody else had stopped. Indeed, nobody else in the hallway with him had a head full of dark curls.

He realized with a jolt that this woman must be the new 'hot' teacher that his peers had been buzzing about. Being asexual, he was admittedly ambivalent. She was, of course, very objectively pretty. She also looked tired.

"Um, do you, I mean," he began with some difficulty. He always had trouble speaking in unexpected situations. "Do you need help with..."

The most annoying aspect of stuttering on TH sounds was the inability to replace some of the most common words in the English language with others. If he realized it beforehand, he could replace a word so that he sounded normal. 'Thankful', for example. Or 'thistle', or 'theology'. Those were easy enough to avoid.

'That', however, was kind of a linguistic staple.

Bracing himself and clearing his throat, he started again.

"Do you need, um, help with th... th-th-that?"

He winced a little.

[deedogma]

"Da, you young man." she confirmed with a nod.

He looked to be just the right kind of student help she needed. However, when he spoke, or rather, stuttered, her smile nearly faltered but she kept it in place. Natasha felt an immediate connection to anyone who had a difficult time with getting sounds right when they spoke. V's and W's were the bane of her existence in everywhere but the Russian language and her heart went out to Amos.

"Yes I need help vith this. I have a wery heavy box vith supplies and only my two hands to get it all hung up. You have good hands for this. Vhat is your name? I'm Miss Andrejovich, but you can call me Tasha."

She rummaged through the box of things, taking out a pair of staplers and a box of staples. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him to see if he reacted to her own speech difficulties. Although she didn't let it stop her, it was a flaw in herself that she deeply despised.

Never one to hedge the truth out of common courtesy, Tasha commented bluntly,

"You stutter on 'th' sound only or other vords? Is it from nerves or habit?"

She lifted out a chunk of paper and watched Amos' mouth as he spoke. Her own troubles came to mind and she wondered if his problem stemmed from a mouth deformation or nervous habit. Natasha was glad that fate handed her a student she could relate too. It was damn lonely and incredibly hard to be in a new country alone with no true friends or family to be with. If nothing else, a person with a shared speech impediment would be good company in the hour or two it would take to put up the papers around campus.

[Amos Freeman]

Amos nodded his bemused acknowledgement, then examined his hands briefly. He supposed that was a compliment. He offered a cautious half-smile.

She had kind of a nice accent, he thought.

"Amos F-F-Freeman," he said obediently, instinctively putting a hand to his throat. It fell quickly back to his side. He peeked into the box, which appeared to be full of flyers.

Well, flyers he could definitely handle. He wrote for the Hammel Bugle and had founded the Environmental Awareness Club -- he could write the book on flyer-hanging.

Someone else would have to read it, though....

"Oh, um," he murmured, slightly crestfallen. He always hoped that nobody would say anything. "I, uh, I've always done it. Mostly on TH and F sounds... but sometimes...."

He paused, gathering his thoughts. She was a teacher, so it was polite to answer her question honestly, right?

"It gets worse if I'm nervous," he said. "But I was, um, in speech th-therapy when I was a kid, and th-they couldn't... f-f-figure out why."

Realizing that his face was flushed, he rubbed the back of his neck absentmindedly.

It wasn't like it was going to stop him from putting up flyers, he thought a little reproachfully.

[deedogma]

She scrutinized Amos' hands critically and found them long fingered, refined and graceful and she subconsciously nodded her approval.

"Da, you should consider being a hand model vith those. They're perfect." She stated matter of factly.

Self centered as always, Tasha didn't see his unhappy look as anything other than confirmation of also hating imperfections in oneself. She listened to the teen as they stacked each of the papers according to the three primary colors she'd made them in.

"Vell if you've had the same speech therapy I did," she paused to wrinkle her nose in distaste at the memory, "then it's confirmed that it's not a palate or jaw problem... same as me." The Russian woman commented, trying to reassure him that at least on some level, she understood the problem.

"These blue vuns go by the doorvay at the main entrance. The red vuns are wery easy to see against snow and vill go on the campus board to stand out more and the yellow vuns are for the cafeteria board."

Tasha handed a box of staples to Amos to have for the stapler she gave him.

"Have you alvays had this stutter or did something bring it out? For me it vas my first English class that made me sound this vay. If I try wery hard I can manage, but then I talk more slowly and have extra letters in front--like I'm ... mentally inferior." She spat out the last two words with vehemence, angry at her own pronunciation difficulties. "And nerves? Da, nerves make it much vorse!"

[Amos Freeman]

Amos blinked at her suggestion. He'd never even entertained the idea of being a hand model. Or any kind of model, really. To be quite honest, he'd never entertained the idea of being anything other than a journalist.

"Um, th-thanks," he said as politely as possible.

He made a mental note to thank his mom next time they spoke on the telephone. She'd apparently given him some good hand genes.

Amos nodded at her assertion; they had done all kinds of measurements and physical tests in his mouth, but they'd found nothing. It was probably genetic, they'd determined, or an abnormality in his brain.

He tensed, remembering that sinking feeling. There was nothing wrong with his brain, he was certain. His brain worked just fine. He could prove it. Just read his articles!

"F-For as long as I can remember," he said, slightly more confident now that the other woman was sharing her experience with him. "I have, um, an initial repetitive stutter, too. I hate th-that f-f-feeling, where people look at you like...."

He trailed off, making a face.

"Like not being able to speak well means... th-that you can't th-think well, either."

He took the stapler and accompanying staples and grabbed a stack of flyers. He was now determined to do an upstanding job.

"Do you... I mean..." he hesitated, wondering if he was allowed to ask questions back. "Sorry, but I've always wondered, if you're bilingual... do you also, um, do it in... Russian?"

He hoped that she wouldn't be upset with him for asking.

[deedogma]

"You're Velcome Amos."

When the boy attempted to describe it, Tasha nodded with complete agreement. She took out stacks of paper and slammed down each one with a hard thump for emphasis as she spoke the next sentence.

"Da! They look at us (whump!) like ve (slam!) are stupid (thunk!) and wery (kerthump!) dumb!"

The young woman didn't realize it, but she was starting to truly bond with another person for the first time since her parents! She rarely if ever met anyone with a speech difficulty like herself and never really related with people on a personal level before.

But Amos--he understood the need to prove yourself above and beyond the average crowd, just to be thought of as normal. Holding the stack of papers in her left arm and the stapler in her right, she answered with a nod.

"Da, they call it an articulation disorder vere I substitute vun letter for another. My vwee's and doublevyoo's are still wery bad, but I've almost completely gotten through my own 'TH' and 'D' switch. I'm still vorking on it, but I -vill- do it." She said with determination.

"I learned at the Sviss school and they taught me English, Dutch, and French on top of my native Russky. I had to prove that I am -not- stupid, so studying hard, I graduated vith high honors at sixteen and vent on to college for my ECE."

She glanced at Amos, her gaze lingering on the adorable dark curls. 'Such a cute boy! It's a shame that he is needlessly picked on for the same thing I was in school.'

"Vhat do you like to do to show them vhat you really are?" Natasha asked as she watched his nimble, well made hands putting up fliers in precise and perfect order.

Da, this was a -good- boy, this Amos.

[Amos Freeman]

Tasha's forceful manner caught Amos slightly off guard; he wasn't used to people being so forward and honest and... well, kind of angry. He liked her, though, in the sense that she was very much herself.

Amos could respect that.

To him, it was more important that people were honest than tactful.

"Oh," Amos said with an empathetic nod. "I'm sure you will, um, I mean, you'll do it. You seem very determined, and th-that's what... makes th-the difference."

He attached a few more flyers with a rhythmic ka-thunk of his stapler.

"Th-th-that's amazing," he praised quietly. Amos didn't speak any other languages; depending on who you asked, he couldn't technically even speak English.

He paused at her question, and his cheeks flushed slightly pink. He wondered if talking to her about his accomplishments would be misconstrued as bragging.

"I'm th-the editor of the school newspaper," he said meekly. "I, um, love writing. And reading. I want to be a journalist when I leave here."

[deedogma]

After placing three more fliers, she nodded at Amos' praise as her due and continued along the board.

'Ha!' she thought to herself with satisfaction, 'I -knew- he would be an intellectual! We are not stupid, we are very smart and he's yet more proof of it!'

Illustrating she was pleased with the teen's answer, she smiled encouragingly,

"Da! See? A brilliant journalist! Many incredible people have von a Nobel prize for that same kind of career. If you vork hard Amos, I'm positive you too vill succeed."

The work went by much quicker with another pair of hands and she was glad that Amos was so efficient. Each paper was stapled neatly with the corners lined up and nothing wrinkled.

"Did you know that many great celebrities through history have had speech problems like us? Vinston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Darvin, Lenin, and even Thomas Jefferson! And all of them are remembered throughout history for being great--not for speech problems, but just being head and shoulders above the rest!"

The pride rang in her tone, counting herself and Amos among the noble names of history and taking much comfort from it.

Once they'd put up all the blue posters, she took the staplers, staples and other odds and ends, gesturing for him to take the box.

"Now ve can put up the red vuns next, da? Vhat is your favorite article that you've vritten? Your parents must be wery proud of you to be Editor of the paper--not every student gets to be in a position of authority and trust."