Most of them have gotten past chapter 10, and the answers to my question, “Why is Dally’s death somehow sadder than Johnny’s?” are starting to trickle in. I’ll share some of those soon, when we talk about chapter 12, but I want to talk about this guy Jhonny.
(me, reading the first responses to the question, while they read silently) “‘Cal,’ how do you spell Johnny?”
“J-o-h-n-n-y.” Sort of puzzled.
“So, who’s this Jhonny guy?” I pronounce it like I’m clearing my throat, “Jah-Honny.”
Everybody laughs. Of course, as you know, 7th graders are like parrots; they have to repeat everything they hear that catches their attention. So now I have half the class sounding like they have a 2 pack-a-day habit.
“I figure I have at least 6 or 8 of you, in this class, who did the same thing. Who is this Jhonny guy? Some of you went even back and forth between Johnny and Jah-Honny.”
Every year is the same. Jhonny.
“Where does this come from? Who knows someone who spells his name that way? Where, in English, do we ever see the jh combo!?”
Of course, some try to claim that, “I knew a guy in 3rd grade who spelled it that way.” They sound like old guys lying about the fish they caught.
“No, you didn’t.”
I swear, ever since I’ve been teaching this novel, I get dozens of Jhonnies every year. Can somebody please explain to me?
“We’ve been reading the book for 6 weeks! You see his name all the time! It’s JOHNNY!”
“He’s kind of cranky today.”
This is hilarious. I am teaching this book for the first time so I have not idea Jhonny was so common. I have at least 3 kids who persist in this spelling error
ZOMG … so I’m *not* the only one!
I rocked spelling hard in middle school — except for ‘Johnny,’ which I often mis-spelled, even though I knew (in theory) how to spell it.
It seems worth noting that a lot of us also like to move the ‘h’ in Buddha around, so we get ‘Bhudda’ (Buh-Hooda?) and sometimes ‘Buddah’ (which always makes me say, “It’s like Buddah!”). I suspect that there maybe some relationship, there.
At any rate, your blog is awesome, and as someone who is very likely to find himself teaching middle school in the not-so-distant future, I’m glad to know that my old friend Jhonny is alive and well.
Oh, so true. At least five every class talk about Jhonny. The most difficult year to give then a hard time about that spelling was the year I had a “Jhonatan” in my class. Yes. True that.