Welcome to Wunchiesville

Randi and I were talking about our childhoods the other day and I got to remembering a story from when I was in the third grade. At my elementary school, every third grade class would do a "Fun Friday" in the spring where students would set up little stores in their classroom (where they could sell candy or provide games to play). Students would get fake money to buy all of this stuff (if I remember correctly, you could earn the fake money by answering questions in class or helping the teacher).

Anyway, each class had to come up with a name for their classroom by which that room would be referred to on Fun Friday (because, you know, "Mrs. Pope's Classroom" wasn't fun enough). I remember my teacher telling us one day to all think of a name. Each student could submit a name and then the class would choose from those submissions. When the teacher told us this, I very distinctly remember immediately thinking of the name "Wunchiesville" (pronounced one-cheese-ville). I knew that Wunchiesville would be the most awesomely amazing name for a classroom. I was practically ready to tell the other students, "yo guys. I got this. Don't even bother submitting a name, because I've already named the classroom. And the name IS AWESOME."

Despite the extreme awesomeness that was the name Wunchiesville, I thought that I better write it down, in case I forgot (or in case somebody else came up with that same name and I needed to prove that I thought of it, too...or something). I went home that day thinking about how awesome it would be to learn cursive while sitting in Wunchiesville.

I think now is a good time to point out that I had never previously thought of the term "Wunchiesville" and I really have no idea what it could possibly mean. As such, I am still quite puzzled as to why I was brimming with confidence that the name was truly the greatest thing anyone had ever thought of.

So, I get to school the next day and the teacher brings out a can and tells everyone who came up with a name to write it down on a paper (good thing I had already taken care of that!) and put it in the can. So I do. And I notice that a few other people do, too....but I don't care because none of them wrote Wunchiesville.

So the teacher tells us that she'll read all of the names and then we'll vote. She reads a few super lame ones, like "Fantastic Fun Land" and "Pope's Palace" and my confidence just shoots through the roof....

ME: Fantastic Fun Land? Really? What do you sell there? Hugs?

And finally, the teacher pulls mine out.

TEACHER: Wun...uh...wunch....hmm. OK, "Wunchesville?"

That's pretty much how it went. She stumbled and then couldn't pronounce it (she ultimately said "one-chuz-ville" which is a HORRIBLE name...duh). And she sort of said it like it was a question. Not a good sign.

Some people in the class snickered and I wanted to get up and be like "NO! It's Wun-CHEESE-ville. And it's AWESOME!" But I didn't.

And so the voting commenced. Apparently kids in that class love hugs because Fantastic Fun Land got a ton of votes. My soaring confidence plummeted and I started to wonder if this wasn't going to be the blow out that I thought it would be. Turns out it was. Just that Wunchiesville didn't carry the day.

When the teacher finally read my entry, I realized that nobody was raising their hand. Not even me. Something that the class bully noticed.

CLASS BULLY: Haha! Not even the person who came up with that one voted for it!

I was crushed. How could something that felt so right have turned out to be so wrong? For a while I was convinced that the teacher had totally screwed me over by mispronouncing Wunchiesville. After a while I stopped blaming her and settled on believing that the clowns in my class just weren't quite ready for total awesomeness.

I sometimes wonder if I should've gone a different route and gotten an MBA rather than a JD. That way I could've become an entrepreneur and started my own business. I would have called it Wunchiesville. And nobody from Mrs. Pope's third grade class would ever be allowed in. Especially the bully.