If you’re a teacher with a silly last name, it’s over. Of course, it’s not really over, but it makes your job significantly more difficult. If you have a unique or goofy name, people usually stop making fun of it once you age out of middle school, or at least by the time you become an adult. When you’re a teacher, you’re stuck in a time loop of hack jokes, and only a career shift can get you out of it.  

When I was in 6th grade, my school had a substitute teacher named Miss Smallings. Unfortunately for everybody involved, Miss Smallings was a larger woman, so every 11-year-old was incredibly cruel about her name and size behind her back. She had a reputation for being incredibly cruel, but in hindsight, I don’t blame her at all. If I were getting blamed for breaking the elevator by a bunch of snot-nosed brats, I would be irascible too.