The Sub

“Kaleeb?”

“It’s pronounced Kay-lub. It’s spelled like the C form of Caleb, but with a K. Kaleb. Here!”

“Steven?”

“You mean Steven spelled Stephan? Like Steffan? Here!”

“Jenna?”

“I think you mean Jean-na; there’s an A after the E. I’m here.”

The substitute teacher really was trying to get these names right. Her own name was always being pronounced incorrectly, and she thought her name’s easy; it’s Lea. Yet people never knew whether to pronounce it Lee or Lee-ah [she uses Lee]. Whenever it was her first day with a new group of students, she unfortunately felt like that 10-year old parody that Key & Peele did about a substitute teacher mispronouncing students’ names. Inevitably, the more she got the names incorrect, the more nervous she became, and her pronunciation judgment waned.

And here came a doozy; there was NO WAY she would be able to say this one out loud. It had to have been a joke on the roster to mess with subs, or this student’s guardians were a piece of work when they gave this name. The gender marker in the roll book said ‘female,’ which she felt made it even worse, if it COULD have been worse.

She could tell this wasn’t the first time this class had been through this; whispers and snickers were ebbing and cresting around the room. Many of the faces watched her as she contemplated how to handle this particular name, which she was on the verge of deciding was a joke and skipping it.

The student herself saved the embarrassing moment; “It’s pronounced Shi-thead, emphasis on the thead, which rhymes with read. And I’m here, too.”

Nope. The sub never would have pronounced “Shithead” correctly.