Petty Revenge: Redditor Shares Story About How She Taught a Teacher to Respect a Person’s Name
High school memories are a mix of happy, poignant, funny, and victorious experiences.
One Reddit user delighted a lot of people online by sharing a story from which there’s an important lesson to learn: Respect a person’s dignity by respecting that person’s name.
Posted by u/Gunn_Show on Reddit’s popular forum, r/pettyrevenge, the story begins with the following words: “My name has a silent letter in it and I had this teacher that relentlessly not only kept pronouncing it, but over annunciating it no matter how many times I corrected her. She just kept doing it.”
Later, OP learned this middle school teacher’s schoolyard nickname and thought the knowledge might come in handy in teaching this stubborn mentor the value of upholding people’s dignity by respecting their names.
OP continued the story: “One day I just finally snapped. She called roll and said the mispronunciation of my name. I answered, ‘Yes, Mrs. Icky Booger.’ Her jaw dropped…and you could hear a pin drop, and she said, ‘That is not my name!’… I clearly stated, ‘And that’s not my name.'”
Well, their teacher finally learned her lesson, and from then on, according to OP, she pronounced her name correctly.
What’s in a name? Why is it so important to call people by their names, and properly?
Dale Carnegie, author of the bestselling book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, aptly wrote, “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
Our names represent who we are, our character, our pride, our moral convictions, and everything that matters to us. Even though we may share names with other individuals, with our names we feel a sense of uniqueness, with thoughts and dreams of our own, with our own voice, and not just like a grain of sand that’s lost in the vastness of an ocean.
This is why it’s not surprising that many Reddit users found a strong connection with this story. Many even recalled similar experiences, some hilarious, others utterly ridiculous!
One Reddit user wrote, “I go by a diminutive that’s shared with a name much more common than mine, so not only do I get people mispronouncing my full name, but folks who decide my name must be the common one. Think Sandy, but short for Sandrine instead of Sandra. Had a Sunday school teacher when I was about 8 that, despite weekly correction, insisted on calling me Sandra. ‘Hi Sandra/ It’s Sandy / Oh, but Sandra’s such a pretty name/ that’s not my name, either…’ Finally ran into her again some 20 years later and she’s all ‘Oh, Sandra! Look at you all grown with a family.’ I stop, look her dead in the eye and remind her, ‘That’s still not my name.’ And then got a scolding from my mom for being rude to an old church lady, to which I responded ‘not any more rude than her deciding to call me the wrong name intentionally for decades.’ My grandma backed me up and has since been calling her any name but her own anytime they cross paths😁”
Another person shared, “My buddy in high school went by Ferd (not Fred). A few teachers kept calling him Fred. He started ignoring them. One teacher demanded he respond, so he yelled back, ‘You can either use my actual name Ferdinand or my nickname Ferd. I do not answer to Fred.’ Shut up the teacher.”
Meanwhile, this commenter’s words will make you realize how absurd some stubborn people can be: “Mispronouncing a name you’ve been repeatedly corrected on is a sign of disrespect. My mom (back in the 1950s) had a teacher who repeatedly mispronounced her name because she said her parents spelled it wrong.”
We hope these teachers all learn their lessons!
