When I stepped into the classroom as a first-year teacher in 1989, I knew that my students would have a tough time pronouncing my last name. Public school teachers had always messed it up (unless they’d taught my older brothers years earlier), so I didn’t expect eighth graders to do any better.
My last name is pronounced ‘Shek” but is spelled in a way that doesn’t look anything like that, and through all my years as a student, teachers did a great job mangling it, especially on the first day of school. I won’t get into all the mispronunciations, but supposedly the correct pronunciation of my last name is ‘Shek.’ That’s the way I was taught. I wouldn’t be surprised if that turns out to be wrong, though. So much of what I learned at a young age has turned out to be false that I wouldn’t be shocked if the correct pronunciation of my last name turned out to be something like ‘Skork.’
Of course, my first year of teaching was a borderline disaster, but it wasn’t because of my last name. I don’t even remember my students doing anything wrong with it. They probably did, but mispronunciation of my last name was the least of my worries that year.
Anyway, in the early 1990s, Shaquille O’Neil became a famous basketball player, so my students called me Mr. Shaq, and I went with it. At least the mispronunciation was in reference to a popular athlete. I took it as a compliment. Then in the early 2000s, the movie Shrek was released.
The good news was that Shrek made it very easy to teach students how to pronounce my name correctly: it’s ‘Shrek’ without the ‘r.’ The bad news was that students loved calling me Mr. Shrek. A little patience and a few bathroom denials at the beginning of every school year solved that problem. Still, if I ever go back into teaching, I think I’ll just have my students call me Mr. James.
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Below is the first episode of a blog serial that I wrote in 2012 called “Long Story.” The first episode deals with teachers who had unusual names. Some of those last names were much worse than mine.
LONG STORY: TEACHERS WITH FUNNY LAST NAMES
When I was growing up, I had some teachers with unfortunate last names. In junior high I had a math teacher named Mrs. Butte. She insisted her name was pronounced “Bee-Yute” like the word “beauty,” but she wasn’t attractive at all. If she had been a hot chick with cleavage, we might have pronounced her name correctly. But she wasn’t, so we didn’t.
There was also a social studies teacher named Mr. Dick (and his name was pronounced exactly like it was spelled). Nobody made fun of Mr. Dick. You would think a guy named Mr. Dick would stay out of teaching because of his last name, but nobody ever made fun of him.
Mr. Dick was an old man who had cool tattoos on his arm. He had been teaching for decades, and everybody in town had grown up knowing Mr. Dick (or knowing about him), so nobody thought anything about his name anymore. He was just an old man named Mr. Dick.
There’s no way to prove this, but my junior high school was probably the only one that had a Mrs. Butte and a Mr. Dick.
Then in high school I had an English teacher named Mr. Faggins. Mr. Faggins announced on the first day of school that his name was to be pronounced as “Fay-guns.” I knew my rules of pronunciation and how the double consonant causes the vowel in front of it to have the soft sound, but I was also polite enough not to argue with an adult about how to pronounce the adult’s last name. I’ve always believed that a person should be able to choose how to pronounce his or her name.
Of course, somebody would have to test Mr. Fay-guns.
Continue reading at Long Story: Teachers with Funny Last Names .
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Here’s my ONE novel… A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. Free delivery in the United States!
$15.00
Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!
Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.
I haven’t been in a public school classroom in over five years, but sometimes the English teacher reflexes still kick in. When I found this copy of Thongor in the City of Magicians in a used book store and read the cover, my first thought was, “That modifying phrase is in the wrong place.”
Here’s the sentence that caught my attention:
“Thongor battles the satanic power of Zaar’s science and sorcery- armed only with his Valkarthan broadsword.”
I mentally corrected it to the following:
“Thongor, armed only with his Valkarthan broadsword, battles the satanic power of Zaar’s science and sorcery.”
Yeah, the sentence on the cover is more dramatic, and that’s what’ mattered most ‘s important to the book publishers. I know this stuff doesn’t really matter. I know nobody reads that sentence and thinks that the Valkarthan broadsword belongs to the sorcery. Everybody who reads that sentence knows that the ‘his’ refers to Thongor.
Plus, the book came out in 1968, so nobody involved with this book would care right now anyway.
I didn’t tell anybody around me in the store about this ‘error.’ I haven’t mentioned this to my friends or relatives. I’m mentioning it only here. This is my blog. That’s the whole point of having a blog, to talk about stuff that nobody else in my life cares about.
I don’t talk about grammar much in my personal life. I know where it would lead me if I did. I remember what happened whenever I talked about grammar in my classroom when I was a teacher, but I had to do it. It was almost part of the curriculum. I think every year it became less and less part of the curriculum even though nobody in charge would openly admit it.
I bought the book Thongor in the City of Magicians for $3.00. It might not be my favorite kind of barbarian story, but at least the author came up with his own barbarian and didn’t try to make it into a Conan book. A lot of authors like to write Conan stories instead of making up their own barbarian, so I respect Thongor and his Valkarthan broadsword, even if the publisher’s sentence structure might be a little off.
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If you’ve read my book, you might see that I’ve made my own share of mistakes (Aaaaarrrrgh!), so maybe I have no room to talk.
*****
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. My handwriting is actually legible, but I’m left-handed, so I might smudge my signature sometimes. Free delivery in the United States!
$20.00
Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!
Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.
*****
And here are more nitpicky English teacher observations:
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: Jane Eyre
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: The Great Gatsby
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: The Scarlet Letter
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: Great Expectations
Egads! I think my older brother folded this original illustration of episode 16 and put it in his pocket or something. I bet Charles Schulz never abused his own drawings like this.
Yes, my older brother knows that the Olympics don’t take place every year. He knew that back in 1979 when this comic strip was published in our local weekly newspaper. It’s Calloway that thinks the Olympics are every year. It was done on purpose to establish that Calloway is losing his memories of what Earth was like. At least, that’s what my older brother says.
I don’t understand why he still gets so angry whenever I mention the annual Olympics.
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For more context, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 17 .
Here, you can see my older brother experimenting more with his 1979 comic strip “Calloway the Castaway,” changing the drawing style a little and adding more background details. I’m not sure how much the casual reader noticed when he/she read “Calloway the Castaway” in our local weekly newspaper, though.
Because I sometimes watched my brother draw the comic strips, I could usually see the original in its larger form where the smaller details would be easier to notice. On a computer screen today, you can enlarge the picture if you want to, but you couldn’t do that with a newspaper. If the details or letters were too small or smudged or faint, then you had to squint. Sometimes you just had to guess what was on the newspaper page, especially if it had been raining outside when you picked up your newspaper.
Haha. Newspapers. I wonder if they’re still around. I think I saw one in some guy’s driveway a few days ago.
For more context, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 16.
WARNING!! Charles M. Schulz, the creator of the comic strip Peanuts, and five-minute birthday parties are unrelated topics that I’m putting into the same blog post.
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Charles Schulz and I share the same birthday, November 26, and for years I’ve been meaning to share my favorite Peanuts comic strip on Dysfunctional Literacy, but I keep forgetting. Today, I remembered and posted it below in four parts. The Peanuts Treasury (cover posted above) has a bunch of classic Peanuts strips from the 1960s (I think) and 1970s.
Later on today, I’ll have my five-minute birthday party with dozens of people, loud music, and maybe a few dancers. And then after a few minutes, I’ll get tired of everybody and tell them to leave. And then I’ll read a book and watch a movie. Maybe I’ll even read a Peanuts book. It’ll be great!
If people stay late during a five-minute birthday party, that’s okay, but when I tried the one-hour birthday party a few years ago, the lingerers got on my nerves, so I said never again. When it comes to crowds and music and dancers, five-minutes is about all I can take before I need my quiet again.
Another benefit of the five-minute birthday party is that it’s not long enough for any drama to take place. When I was younger, I thought a party wasn’t any good unless there was a fight, a girl started crying, or someone threw up. Now that I’m older, I don’t want any of those things happening at my five-minute birthday party, especially if it’s at my place. I don’t mind if the drama happens at somebody else’s party, though.
At any rate, if you’re borderline antisocial but still have friends/acquaintances that you don’t want to ignore, you might want to consider the five-minute party.
Haha! I related to this strip a lot when I was a kid. Anyway, Charles Schulz was an introvert (I think). He might have approved of the five-minute birthday party.
*****
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. My handwriting is actually legible, but I’m left-handed, so I might smudge my signature sometimes. Free delivery in the United States!
$10.00
Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!
Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.
Aaaarrrrgh! Here’s another comic strip where my older brother lost the original drawing. Even the scrapbook version he saved is kind of messed up. This is one of my favorites as well, but the setup line is smudged over from the adhesive on the other side. Why is it THIS one that has to be messed up?
And just in case you don’t know, smoking was a thing in 1979.
For more context, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 14.
My older brother lost the original drawings for several episodes of his 1979 comic strip “Calloway the Castaway.” Thankfully, he cut out a copy of each strip from our local weekly newspaper and pasted them into a scrapbook that he’s somehow hung onto for over 40 years. The newsprint has yellowed, but the comic strip is still readable.
For more context, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 14.
Out of all of his episodes of “Calloway the Castaway,” this one might make my older brother cringe the most. As it is, he gets uncomfortable looking at his old comic strips from 1979 because all he sees are the flaws, but he really doesn’t care for this one. Yeah, the punch line probably wouldn’t be taken well today, but for 1979 this was pretty light.
For more context, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 13 !
Having a continuous storyline in a weekly comic strip had to be kind of kind of tough for my older brother when he was a cartoonist for our local weekly newspaper in 1979. Each episode had to be self-contained enough that new readers understood what was goin on without reading past episodes, and each episode had to be compelling enough for familiar readers to come back.
I think this comic strip works on both levels.
For more context, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 12.
The potential problem with drawing a weekly comic strip is that readers might not be able to keep track when the comic strip has an extended storyline. This was one of my older brother’s concerns in 1979 when he was drawing “Calloway the Castaway” for our local weekly newspaper. It’s one thing to have a continuing story for a daily comic strip that everybody reads. But a weekly in an obscure newspaper?
And now it’s a weekly on an obscure blog.
For more context, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 11!
Dysfunctional Literacy 