Challenging social rules

[pegkerr]

This was a comment I made at sartorias's journal at a discussion about social rules, and I thought I'd re-post it here.

I vividly remember two instances when I was growing up when on separate occasions two teachers told me something I knew was DEAD WRONG.

One was in kindergarten, when another child was drawing a (rather inept) picture of a turkey. She painstakingly drew a circle on the turkey's tummy, and told the teacher, "That's the turkey's belly button."

Now even I, at the tender age of five, knew that turkeys didn't have belly buttons. But I was genuinely startled by the teacher's response. "Linda," she sniffed, "it isn't nice to talk about belly buttons."

I knew, even then, that there was nothing wrong with any part of the body. Even belly buttons.

The other time happened in eighth grade. I was stopped by a teacher in the hall. "Margaret," he told me loftily (he could never grasp the fact that I went by Peg, not Margaret), "ladies don't whistle." (Edited to add: Oh yeah, and I just remembered: he actually quoted to me, "Whistling girls and crowing hens/Always come to some bad ends.")

Again, I was so startled by the immediate and sure knowledge that he was wrong that I didn't make the obvious answer until he had passed.

I was a lady.

And I damn well could whistle anytime I liked.

Tell me about a time a teacher or a parent or someone else in authority told you something that you knew immediately was wrong.

Comments

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

(he could never grasp the fact that I went by Peg, not Margaret)

I can't recall anything right now (though I know there MUST be something to recall), but this part of your post reminded me of something that happened to my cousin:

For one year, my cousin attended a Catholic school. She was 10 or so. The nun (this was in the days when there were nuns) in charge of her class insisted on calling her "Margaret." She called her "Margaret" on the first day of class, and "Margaret" on the last day of class, despite corrections by my cousin, who in those days went by "Peggy", and her parents.

My cousin's full given name is "Pegeen."

She was glad to go to public school where the teacher, at least, would believe her when she saw the real name on the class roll.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is how scottjames's parents found out that he needed glasses: his third grade teacher kept insisting on calling him Jim. And he kept telling her his name was Scott, and she kept assuming he was just trying to be a macho miniature manly-man, and she wasn't standing for that. So when his folks went to parent-teacher conferences they got it sorted out, and they asked Scott when they got home, "When you saw your name written in the wrong order up on the wall, why didn't you correct her?" And he said, "There are names up on the wall?" And off they went to get him glasses.

One of the nice things about being a Marissa is that people didn't have a standard nickname for it. Melissas all got stuck being "Missy" when we were little, but nobody assumed any nickname of me, so Mris/Mrissa is all my own.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I had a teacher who insisted I didn't know how to spell my first name (which is a variant of a, no longer, common name).

She told me, after I'd written it out, that I was wrong, my name wasn't 'x' it was really 'y'.

I apparently came home in tears (shame, frustration, I don't recall).

She got an earful from my mother.

There were a couple of more incidents in the course of the year. I learned a lot, she, not so much.

TK

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

My first grade teacher was convinced all year that one of our Brians was actually Bryon. I have no idea why, nor why it never got corrected.