'I gave my teacher a mean nickname 16 years ago and everyone still uses it - I feel awful'

A man gave his teacher a nickname more than 16 years ago and is surprised to hear it still echoes through the halls of a school today, having started as a joke it's grown into a persistent name

By: irishmirror.ie

Apr 27 2024
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'I gave my teacher a mean nick

What started as a harmless class joke quickly snowballed into something permanent. A man has admitted to feeling ‘awful’ about telling his classmates that one of his teachers looked like the sidekick from the Super Mario computer game, Luigi when he was in school back in 2008.

He admitted he felt bad for his former teacher in the confessions section on Reddit. He wrote: “Everybody thought he really looked like him. It became a thing [it escalated from] a harmless prank to disrespect when they started to call him Luigi in the middle of the class.

He described instances where the teacher would walk into his classroom to find Luigi written on the board and sometimes even drawings of Luigi. “He hated it bad, he was furious,” said the man.

The situation got out of hand when two pupils from another grade got suspended for calling the teacher Luigi to his face in class. The school took a firm stance against such behaviour, and issued a stern warning, vowing to identify and punish any student using the nickname. They warned other students would be punished just as harshly when the school said: "We are working to determine who did this and won't tolerate this behaviour and anyone who does this will get suspended and/or expelled.”

Upon seeing the school’s stark warning, the man said that fear gripped him because he was the one who gave his teacher the nickname. He said: “I was trembling with fear because they can easily make their way to me if any of my classmates talk. I was right to be afraid because not only did they make it to my class but narrowed it to only 4 [me and 3 friends] with the help of an 'anonymous tip'.

A school kid said his teacher looked like The Super Mario Bros character Luigi (right) and the nickname stuck for 16 years.

Standing in solidarity, all four students refused to give away any information about the origin of the nickname, as each had different crimes within the scandal. He said: “ If they said I'm the one who came up with the name. I will tell them they are the ones behind the drawings.”

In a dramatic turn of events, the school asked the students' parents to come to school to get to the bottom of the matter. The man’s mother intervened, fiercely defending her child's innocence and redirecting blame towards the school's handling of the situation. "My baby would never do this," his mother shouted, targeting her fury at the school principal and teacher Luigi himself.

After this confrontation, nothing was resolved and the nickname persisted, spreading not only to the whole of the school but also, the wider community. "After this everyone in the school calls him Luigi even outside. “ He said.

“16 years later everyone keeps calling him Luigi, even my neighbour who started middle school this year and I heard him mentioning him. That teacher deserves better than this.”

Reddit commentators found the nickname funny and gave him a break for just doing what kids at school do - pick on each other, teachers included. One commentator wrote: “Guy missed a chance to lean into it. If he had just been like cool rad I’m Luigi and dressed up like him on Halloween it would have taken all the air out of it. Kids only kept doing it because they knew it irked him.”

Another agreed the teacher shouldn’t have taken it so seriously when they wrote: “Haha the band director at my high school looked like Mario and for one football game he had the band play the Mario theme and he dressed up for it. It was awesome.” One more pointed out how kids can be cruel at that age “kids are vicious and can smell your insecurity. Never chum the water.”

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