How a teachers casual remark changed my life.
The idea for this post came from Mike Hickman, who has been writing about some teachers who made an impression on his childhood. However, there are two other writers whose articles also helped inspire me to take to the keyboard. I will mention them at the end of this article.
The teacher who made an off-the-cuff remark that has followed me all my life was a gentleman named Mr. Dalton.
He was our class teacher at my primary school. When teachers spoke to us, they used our first names. During one lesson, Mr. Dalton was asking random members of the class questions. When he came to me, he said, “Ah, you, Barry, Bunny, whatever your name is.” I was nine years old.
That nickname has followed me down over the years.
However, there is a line of demarcation. My family do not call me Bunny. My wife’s friends, those from her working life and the ones from her life before me, call me Barry. Everyone else calls me Bunny. Some people don’t know my real name.
And over the next few days, some people will be asking.
“Did you have a nice Easter Bunny?” 😂
“Have you been a hot cross Bun?” 🤣
It happens every year. 😁
This story does have a strange twist to it.
A few months after uttering the fateful phrase, Mr. Dalton upped sticks and moved to a local secondary school. Two years later, me and several of my classmates also moved to that school and Mr. Dalton became our RE teacher.
By that time, my nickname had taken over me. I no longer thought of myself as Barry Robinson. I was Bunny Robinson.
The name was so heavily imprinted in my brain, I subconsciously began writing it on my exercise books.
It was when I was approaching my sixteenth birthday, almost six years after he gave me my nickname, Mr. Dalton approached me in the playground and asked,
“Why do people call you Bunny?”
When I told him, he just shrugged his shoulders and walked away. I think he thought I was mad. Still, I am glad he didn’t ask me why we called him “Peanut Dalton.” The reason would have been hard to explain.
At the start of this article, I promised to mention the two other writers who gave me a reason to write.
I was perturbed to find my friend Randy Pulley preferred chicks over bunnies, and even more worried when CDTPPW informed us he and his family are going to eat the Easter Bunny for dinner.
Scary for a Bunny.
