I met a homeless deaf man today. Need help understanding what he said.

Question

I'm working at an Emergency Room tonight and a homeless man came in to use the bathroom. He took a while and was opening/closing the door, so I went to see what was up during one of his door openings. He came out and I offered him coffee which he agreed to. After I made the coffee he refused it and left. While I was waiting for the coffee, he was signing something to me. It looked like the hands in [The Creation of Adam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creation_of_Adam#/media/File:Creaci%C3%B3n_de_Ad%C3%A1n_(Miguel_%C3%81ngel). He held both hands in front of him with his right hand clasped over his left. He then pulled his right hand off of his left hand very, very slowly, and waited for me to respond. His left pointer finger was also extended somewhat like the painting. I may have the hands flipped around as well, I'm going solely off of memory and I have no sign language training outside of the alphabet. I don't know what he said and I'd love to find out. He seemed very grateful that I was paying attention and trying to help him but I suspect his ultimate refusal of coffee was because of this hand sign, so I'm very curious. For those interested in more description, please see my comment below where I detail the entire motion, which he signed to me 2-3 times, seeming disappointed I didn't respond.

Answer 1

From your description it looks like SLOW - https://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/s/slow.htm

If he pointed at the coffeemaker, he probably was indicating it's too slow. If he was pointing at you, he may have been asking you to slow down or you're too slow to respond.

The link also has free self-paced ASL lessons if you're interested.

Answer 2

From your description, the only word I can think of is "English" (see: https://www.signingsavvy.com/sign/ENGLISH/128/1). But that doesn't seem to fit the situation. Do you have anymore details you could share?