My Alter Ego

Okay, I already Myspaced about this, but then I realized that some of you don't have Myspace. I would Facebook about it, but I'm just not that Facebooky yet. I feel like I'm already committed to Myspace and if I committed equally to Facebook I'd have to quit my job just to keep up. Anyway...I was grading some papers last night and came across two mistakes in my name that led me to invent a teaching alter ego.

I make everyone put their name, my name, the assignment, and the date at the top of the paper just like every teacher does. And as I was looking over someone's paper last night, I noticed that my first name was not Monica but, in fact, it was really Maniac. Imagine my surprise. I thought about the possibility that this person was insulting me, but then I decided that they just didn't know how to spell my name. When the infallible red squiggle showed up, this person just changed the name to the first option. So Maniac it is.

Then, I have another person who has been calling me O'Bryan all semester long. And really, aren't all Irish pretty much the same? I could get upset about this, but my real last name has only been my last name for a year and a half, so in some ways I feel like O'Neil is my Rent To Own name instead of my married name. Maybe after five years I'll feel like an O'Neil. Maybe not, but that's for a different post.

So after being called both Maniac and O'Bryan last night, I decided I would adopt both names as my teaching/grading alter ego. I informed David of this by saying things like "Maniac O'Bryan's not gonna take any shit from you" or "Maniac O'Bryan likes 12pt Times New Roman" or "Maniac O'Bryan loves the smell of red ink." And I said all of this while punching the air and stomping my feet. Well, he thought I was going crazy, so you can imagine his relief when I told him that I had just adopted a teaching/grading altar ego. Whew!! I mean, crazy people don't do that.

So that's just a little insight into what I do for a living. The fun never stops.