Just a few weeks ago I smiled at a guy at a bus stop and he said, “you’re a lot friendlier in the evening than in the morning.” I looked at him blankly and said “have I ever seen you before?” He told me that he saw me almost every day on the bus. Oops. Not only had I ignored or rebuffed his attempts to be friendly, I had also failed to recognize him at all. There was no way to defend myself, I was so embarrassed.
As a former teacher, I can say that if I got an email like that, I’d be pretty offended too. If all of that stuff were true I’d expect the person to come into my office and sit and talk to me about it. Emails are so impersonal sometimes, and if you really have a serious issue to talk about, it must be done in person. Ideally through tears and sobs so that you can elicit an emotional reaction from the teacher. I know when my students broke down crying it usually got me to soften up a bit on being more lenient.
Sorry if that sounds cold or heartless, and I’m not saying what you did was wrong, but I can definitely see the instructor’s side to this one.
Buuuuut…couldn’t you, as the teacher, at that point say, “Please come to my office during office hours and we’ll discuss it”? No reason to jump to the worst conclusion.
It sounds like none of the assignments were in on time, not just one or two, so I wouldn’t even see the point in having them come in to discuss it. If someone has the syllabus and can’t be arsed to show up to class because they want to do it online, they’re not getting any slack from me. I’d be annoyed that they even thought it was a possibility, and I see how the email would read as a student vaguely threatening some kind of ADA bullshit lawsuit without informing anyone or going through the proper channels for their issues, which is probably exactly how it came across to the instructor.
(I haven’t taught in a couple of years for some reason…)
Actually, I agree with you, and we don’t really know what the instructor’s exact response was. I was just responding to drew’s comments on wanting said meeting to be face-to-face.
I had something similar happen - I know someone with a serial killer in her family tree. I also have a dog who is quite handy at catching squirrels, birds, possums…
I referred to her as “our little serial killer” in front of said friend. Oooops.
One day I didn’t get my time card in on time, so I took it to the department secretary late.
DS: That’s OK, but could you take it over to Helen in timekeeping for me?
Me: I don’t think I know Helen.
DS: Oh she’s the cute redhead.
Me: Oh really?
DS: Too bad for you she is married.
Me: Hmmm…Happily?
DS: I wouldn’t know <now sobbing> some of us aren’t these days!
My sister-in-law was pregnant, so I started collecting weird names so I could give her a joke baby-names book at her shower. I see a lot of interesting names come through the hospital’s ER, and I had a list in my lab coat pocket of some of the best ones. I’m talking names like Cannon, Sheqwonnika, and McKinnleigh. My favorites are the ones that are normal names with whacked-out spellings like Jaysonn or Dylynn. So one day I giggle at a name (for the record, it was A’Lexus, apostrophe and all) and pull out my list to add it, and my coworker asks what I’m doing, so I show her the list and tell her about all these hysterical crazy-spelled names. And she goes quiet. Apparently her son, whose name I thought was Caleb, is actually Kalyb. Oh dear.
She forgave me, and most of the time I’m able to forget that this nice, smart, normal woman gave her kid a name he’ll have to be correcting people about for life.
How dare you create this thread?? We can’t be friends anymore.
My husband joked for months when I first got pregnant that he wanted to name the baby Cthulu Superfly. I mentioned this to one of my coworkers who said, “Really, Cthulu? I’ve never heard that before…what a pretty name!” I sort of blinked at her a couple of times and said, “Cthulu is a demon created by H.P. Lovecraft. He comes from the sea and devours the world.” She just sort of looked at me and didn’t say anything for a while.
Your kid would have grown up hating you for the same reason as the kid in Antigen’s story - his name is spelled an odd way. Everyone else spells it “Cthulhu”. 
I’m planning on naming my firstborn Kit Sue Lou and teaching her to talk with a lisp.
(this is why I can never have children)
Why not just skip to the chase and name her* Thufferin’ Thuccotash*.
Eh, whatever. If you are going to give your kid a horrible name you might as well spell it really badly too so that they really have something to complain about! 
This is why Dave Barry recommends that you never refer to a woman’s pregnancy unless you can actually see a baby emerging from her body at the time.
Oh, no, not cold or heartless. I’ve taught too. This was just one of those situations where I let part of my life slide into a clusterfuck.
Problem 1: depression sucks the life right out of you, so where normal people undergoing stress have the brain cells to say ‘I should communicate immediately with my teacher and let her know I am undergoing stressful event which are interfering with my ability to do classwork’, I didn’t have the brain cells to communicate until I was climbing out of the Pit of Despair - when half my assignments were late.
Problem 2: it’s a community college, and she’s an associate professor. This pretty much means she has no office, no office hours, and if you don’t talk to her about something during class time, you need to email her. As my brain began to regenerate Thursday morning, it seemed a far better idea to email her than to wait until Monday’s class.
Problem 3: I had asked that the registrar make sure my school email account be pointed to my home email account. This is not supposed to be a big deal. I even got a couple of emails which convinced me it was working. Unfortunately, there were over forty emails, including her initial response, that weren’t forwarded to me. So, I went in Monday, thinking she had completely blown me off. She was already there thinking I had read her reply and was girding for battle.
Problem 4: Said teacher, lovely woman actually, being an associate professor at a community college has had a metric buttload of lying-ass manipulative, entitled students who have pulled this on her as a completely dishonest attempt to get out of doing work. They throw hissy fits and threaten lawsuits and threaten firing and get all horrible.
So, I took most of Monday to process and came to the conclusion that I was, even if inadvertently, a great big butthead. I sent her a groveling apology. She instantly replied (because by now, I’d realized the problem with my email and was going directly to the school server), and we have reached a deal wherein I don’t get to turn in the late work, but I may do all the extra credit work I can squeeze out of my little brain if I have it turned in by Monday, which is when the final is due.
She actually gave me a hug when we talked on Wednesday. I’m planning on baking her cookies or brownies.
And then, of course, shortly after getting home on Wednesday, I started hacking up a lung, my dad appears to have spontaneously lost a large portion of his short term memory, had to go to the dentist, had a panic attack at the dentist, his blood pressure’s spiking, I’ve had two migraines, and my mom begged my help editing a document her boss has been screaming at her about.
So, instead of spending all evening Monday and all day Thursday doing classwork, I only got started this afternoon and was promptly interrupted by my dad have another fit of anxiety over blood pressure, headache, and feeling crappy.
sigh
Going to be up late tonight. Been drinking so much caffeine, taking my ADHD meds, and using my asthma inhaler, I’ve had to double my beta blocker dose so I don’t start getting atrial fibrillations. And I’m thinking . . . there’s just no way I’m going to lay this on my teacher. I’m going to work my flabby butt off, turn in everything I can, and take what I get.
Unintentionally?
Where is the fun in that?
Many years ago my wife was doing yard work at my parents house. New black guy next door neighbor was in his back yard doing stuff too. Wife is only about 15 feet away and asks what he’s doing, like a pleasant converstaion starter. He took it as, what are you, a black man, doing in the neighbors yard. My wife absolutely did not mean it that way, I think some people just walk around looking to be offended.
How true. Back at the East West Center in Hawaii, we had for a while a handicapped black lady from Africa. She could walk, but not very easily and with a pronounced limp. Everyone, residents and staff alike, kept clear of her because if you weren’t insulting her race, you were definitely insulting her disability with even the most innocuous statement.
I once asked a friend’s wife when she was due. Oops.
Obviously not a real close friend, I only see him and his wife maybe once a year.