That's not my name....

Every once in a great while everybody gets called the wrong name. It happens from a friend, from a family member, from your coworker. There are times when it's acceptable, and there are times when it's even funny. The sort of 'laugh with you' funny, instead of 'laugh at you' funny. Then of course there are those times when someone gets your name wrong. Period. As if, making the extra-effort to learn your name is too much work for them.

The Italian professor that teaches the Torts class for my section, has an accent. It shows. It's no big deal, sometimes things come out funny, "pleasure me", "little boys shouldn't play with their balls in the pool", and other juvenile phrases as such. Sometimes she mispronounces names: Evan becomes Even; Asheesh becomes Ashesh; and Lawrence becomes Christopher.

What? Christopher? Yeah.

I started classes 7 weeks ago. I'm not silent. We used to have a name tag bit, so that professors would know our names, and we have since moved past that. I'll admit, there are 80 students in the class. I don't know all of their names. Most of them, yes. Not all of them though. Just the same, the students' names that I don't know, don't speak. They don't say anything unless they absolutely must. I, however, am fairly vocal. I speak on a regular basis, and have spoken on a regular basis for the past 7 weeks. In those past seven weeks, I've been called several things: Christopher, Christian, Christopher, Michael, and Christopher. Apparently, because i sit near a guy named Christopher, I'm a Christopher by association. It's fairly ridiculous, and become more of a joke than anything else. Everyone knows my predicament, and everyone laughs all together about it.

Last week however, the light shone through. After 6 weeks of classes, mistake after mistake, after mistake, My professor finally got it right! I was shocked, visibly shocked. She called me by my rightful name, and I was dazed for a moment. After that point however, I spoke, gave my point, and it was a decent one. Score one for Lawrence, finally.

After that, it was smooth sailing for the class. Filled out some evaluation forms, that she read and acted upon. No, i didn't complain about my name; just other issues such as telling people when they're wrong, and that participation would probably increase with cold-calling, instead of strictly voluntary. It was sweet.

Last Tuesday, we worked through a hypothetical situation. In this situation, it was stated that CA had a statute that drivers can't talk on their cell phones while driving. Mary Nobody was driving at night when she saw someone was following her, and she decided to call 911. While calling 911, she hit John Doe, another driver who had his infant son in the front seat because the child was sick and John was in a hurry to get to the hospital. Sections of the class taking the plaintiff's side, and defendant's side. It was interesting, and somewhat useful to try and work through the arguments of both sides in the situations. We were working through them, arguing back and forth, argument, point, argument, point, and as things got a little off track, I was going to settle it down, and try to bring it back to the original hypo by focusing on a couple of arguments by the other team. The hand went high, and a very confident professor called out, "Christopher."

"DAMN!" loud enough for everyone in the class to hear.

For the record, after that I went ahead and tore up the other arguments. At least, I thought I did. The professor seemed more convinced with what I had said. Though, I think it may have been more persuasion and confidence in the speech than actual points; my team had already made the key points, they just needed to be driven home. (Oh, I'm so funny.)

PS. I don't see how she can get my name wrong after that...everybody else knows who I am at this point.