Getting to Know You: Sept 2018

[Auberon]

9 hours ago, TaleSpinner said:

I had a professor in college who's name was Dr. Fuc and yes, it was pronounced as if it had a K on the end.  He was an oriental man who obviously didn't speak English much outside of work.  The students, kept trying to pronounce his name as Dr. Fook, trying to avoid the obvious English homophone.

 

One day during a lecture, a student started to him a question, saying "Dr. Fook, how does..."

 

He immediately, threw the chalk on the floor, shattering it into a few hundred pieces and screamed, "My name is NOT Dr. Fook! It is Dr. Fuc. Fuc, Fuc, Fuc, Fuc, Fuc, Fuc, Fuc!  Stop dishonoling my famiry!"  He then stormed out of the room and slammed the door.  We all sat there staring at each other for a few tense minutes, then broke out in nervous laughter and left the hall.

 

(Sorry for my transcription of his dialect, but that was how he talked.)

 

A friend of mine in grad school, who was originally from Vietnam, had a perfectly normal English name.  When I asked her how that came about she told me her given name was something to the effect of "little jade" in Vietnamese.  When her parents came to the US and were being processed through the system the person doing their paperwork took one look at her name and informed them that "Bi'ch" (pronounced just how you think) was not going to work as a name for their daughter.  Thus her new name was picked from a list and became her official name. 

 

Probably for the best.  I can think of so many ways that would have been awkward for friends/coworkers, much less the easily offended stranger that feels the need to lecture about how you shouldn't call women a "Bi'ch."

 

[Werkrobotwerk]

14 hours ago, redambrosia said:

Thursday, September 6: 

What is the funniest actual name you've heard of someone having?

I work with a Rong Wang.

[redambrosia]

Friday, September 7: Who was your craziest/most interesting teacher?

[Cyradis]

1 minute ago, redambrosia said:

Friday, September 7: Who was your craziest/most interesting teacher?

 

Trigonometry over summer. 7am classes 5 days a week. 

 

The professor set aside time to brag about his collection of 500 neck ties, and would give bonus credit on quizzes and tests for remembering stuff about them. 

 

And he did really bad stand up comedy.

 

At the time, I thought he was just generically weird. Now in hindsight, geez was he pitiful and weird in a not good way. 

[Pezler the Polychromatic]

8 minutes ago, redambrosia said:

Friday, September 7: Who was your craziest/most interesting teacher?

I had an English teacher was quite non-conformist, and he made it fun to learn Shakespeare and Chaucer. He was pretty easygoing, and he always called us kids "ya pumpkinheads" when we acted up. He also had a knack for finding the girl in class that was the most opinionated and full of herself and verbally poke her, standing back and chuckling when she went off and made a fool of herself in front of the entire class. He deflated a couple of oversized egos when I was there.

 

After I had moved away, I had come back for a holiday and found out that he had become a town councilman in my absence. And true to form, every councilman wore black for the group photo except for my teacher, who wore white just to be different and make a poke at the establishment.

[NebulousMissy]

22 hours ago, redambrosia said:

Thursday, September 6: 

What is the funniest actual name you've heard of someone having?

 

I see all of the names at my work. Just... all of them. From the most boring to the most ridiculous to the ones where I have to spend a moment pronouncing them in my head.

 

There was one, the first name altered because I don't want to get arrested. He had a manly first name like Bruce. His middle initial was B. His last name was Tuff.

 

Bruce B Tuff.

 

I got some amusement out of that one.

 

37 minutes ago, redambrosia said:

Friday, September 7: Who was your craziest/most interesting teacher?

 

Mr. Pallazzo, 10th grade history.

 

"History is nothing more than sex, drugs, and rock and roll." And then he spent the year proving it.

 

Nothing but essays in that class. Except for the speeches. Still the best history class I ever had.

Edited September 7, 2018 by NebulousMissy
formatting!

[Gadgetman!]

My most interesting teacher?

 

Probably my grade school teacher...   

He was a certified comercial diver and took jobs for the local shipyards now and then, and in his wallet he had a gold coin he had picked up from an ancient wreck. (That coin was probably not entirely legal, but... )

[redambrosia]

2 hours ago, redambrosia said:

Friday, September 7: Who was your craziest/most interesting teacher?

My 7th & 8th grade science teacher, who insisted we call him Jack. I don't even know what his last name was. He was a lot of fun to learn from though, always cracking the punniest jokes and getting us to do things hands on. He's the one who started the Jack-is-older-than-the-dinos jokes about himself, even though he was at most in his 40s.

[TGP]

2 hours ago, redambrosia said:

Friday, September 7: Who was your craziest/most interesting teacher?

 7th & 8th Grade History Teacher. 

 

I think I mentioned him before. He told us stories. First hand stories. He was in the US Army between the two world wars. He was part of the Army’s last operational Horse Cavalry Unit. That was disbanded and all those troops got a choice: tanks or aircraft. He chose Army Air Corps. Ended up retiring as an Air Force Lt. Colonel around 1947-48. 

 

He had some great stories. 

 

When he was in charge of 8th grade homeroom (1st period) he let the boys bring model rockets to school (with live engines) and the resulting, informal, model rocket club got to launch their creations from the lawn behind the school building, during school hours, for SCIENCE!

 

~~~~~~~~~

 

2nd place was tenured Professor Lackland. College level history, summer course. He owned part of a race horse, we learned a fair bit about that race horse...

[Glitterwolf]

3 hours ago, redambrosia said:

Friday, September 7: Who was your craziest/most interesting teacher?

 

Can't recall one that stood out much.

I think they were all equally crazy.

[Cranky Dog]

20 hours ago, Kheprera said:

 

Personally I find it repulsive to laugh at someone else's name, whether they chose it or not.

Considering your previous avatar name led some people to believe you were some sort of white supremacist religious lady, it can leave a sour note.

 

Reminds me of an event in 2016 just before Trump got elected. Someone in Nova-Scotia had their personalized license plate reading GRABHER. There were complaints that it supported sexual violence against women, socially unacceptable, rape culture, and so on. But Grabher is his actual surname of Austrian-German heritage, and he's been using the same licence plate number for 26 years.

[Gadgetman!]

Also, many of those with funny names know that they're funny, and even joke about it themselves. 

 

[WhiteWulfe]

6 hours ago, redambrosia said:

Friday, September 7: Who was your craziest/most interesting teacher?

Probably my old high school chemistry teacher.  He catered to the pyros in our class, where he'd show us something awesome, and he'd do it in a way that wasn't necessarily the safest... And then he'd walk the whole class through how to do it safely.. 

 

He was a favourite, and the "light stuff on fire" (especially the class clown's $20 bill) sure kept everyone's attention.  Only had two rules: no nitroglycerin (even if you could show you knew how to make the stable stuff) and no dynamite.  Something about how school boards and the nearby firefighters discouraged such things.  That and stable nitroglycerin is boring. 

[Cranky Dog]

6 hours ago, redambrosia said:

Friday, September 7: Who was your craziest/most interesting teacher?

Hmm, no crazy ones stand out (though many had quirks).

 

As for most interesting, it would be my religious ed teacher in my last year of high school. It was an all boy private Catholic high school, and a good chunk of the older teachers were priests. For nearly all of my high school, religious ed was among the most boring classes, but this one made it interesting. He was the first one to talk about the other religions and denominations.

 

As a bit of context, though I was technically raised in a Catholic environment, I didn't know what a Catholic was, nor that I was one, until I reached high school. I just defaulted everyone as being Christians without any distinction about specific denominations. Considering how uncommon non-Catholics were in the area, I never even thought of there being any differences save for churches for the English-speaking folks, and the French-speaking folks.

 

So this teacher talking about there being a bunch of variety, without any judgment of being good or bad, was fascinating.

 

He was also the curator of the school museum (school is currently 165 years old), and the whole class finally got the tour we were promised for 5 years.

 

My younger brother also had him as a teacher, and equally has fond memories of him. This teacher passed away several months ago.

[pinkymadigan]

7 hours ago, redambrosia said:

Friday, September 7: Who was your craziest/most interesting teacher?

I had a lot of memorable teachers.

-In HS Physics we had a guy who insisted we all brought instruments in so he could inevitably shred on someone's guitar. He also brought in a bed of nails to lay down on. All kinds of crazy stuff. 
-One of our other HS Science teachers was was a former badminton Olympian, and she had a photo of her mid swing (if you've never seen a badminton racket mid swing, they can bend backwards on themselves, apparently, crazy flexible).

-In middle school we had a history teacher who wrote plays we would act out for important historical events. It was basically a script reading class with historical background.

-In my first algebra class we had a guy who at the end of the week would give us "Shelby Stories", these were stories from his childhood in Shelbyville (OH), and they were amazing. It was like the Wonder Years in 15 minute oral format.