Back in yesteryear, students had it so much easier. Sure it was ten miles to school, barefoot, in the snow, uphill, both ways with a goat under each arm, but there were some distinct advantages in that time. It was a simpler time. There was no Gas Crisis, no school shootings, and no MySpace--pedophiles had to rough it back then, waiting it out in darkened vans, with the candy in their pockets melting from the noonday heat. But I digress . . .
The bane of the school-goers' existence has not changed since that day. Homework still stalks the land, devouring time and brain power without discretion. Since some subjects are more important than others, students are forced to divide their time and energy among a multitude of tasks. Throw in a job flipping burgers and schoolwork slips another rung on the To Do list.
So what happens when all the non schoolwork work eats up all your spare time? You need an excuse when you wander into class the next morning. Back in the day, this was an easy fix but students of the 21st century have to get more creative when they formulate an excuse. Observe:
- Circa 1950
Teacher: "Where is your homework, Ms. Morgendorffer?"
Student: "My dog ate my homework."
Teacher: "Very well."
End of story. This was a commonly accepted excuse at the time, what with family dogs being used to hunt mastodons and buffalo and then drag the family possessions around on
travois. Those furry bastards got hungry. Now let's see what happens in this day and age:
- Circa 2007
Teacher: "Where is your homework, Mr. Goméz?
Student: "Yo no sé--my dog ate my homework."
Teacher: "YOUR DOG ATE YOUR HOMEWORK?! How did that happen?!"
Student: "Well, I smeared peanut butter on it, then left it on the table. . ."
Teacher: "HOW CAN YOU DO THAT?! Do you have any idea what kind of irritants the ink from your pen contains?! It could upset his stomach, he'll have to get that pumped! What about his emotional distress?? We have to find a doggy psychologist. And the peanut butter! Do you know how many pesticides Jif sprays on their plants? If that peanut butter wasn't organic, I swear to God--"
And on it goes until the teacher calls the
Humane Society to take Checkers (the dog) away for permanent vacation and the police take Goméz to spend the rest of his days dodging dick in the showers at a state prison.
What's more, the teachers nowadays don't just blindly accept this traditional excuse. I once had a teacher who had a student who had a dog. The dog ate the student's homework and the student called and told the teacher. The teacher, a very hearty ex-Vietnam War nurse, told him to put the puke drenched homework in a Ziploc and bring it in. He did and she gave him full credit. So the children of today need to be armed with a new range of excuses that can save their asses. Here is a new list that can be printed out and referenced during critical times:
- "My iPod got stolen, and that's where I saved the report so I could print it out at school."
- "Sparknotes/Google was down."
- "I don't have it because you and I were boinking all night long, remember?"
Note: Since this is an increasingly popular student-teacher pastime, make sure none of your fellow teacher-boinkers in the room take offense to you hitting that.
- "My TI-89 retroactively suffered the Y2K bug when I replaced the batteries so I couldn't do any of the computations."
- "Solar flares fried my hard drive."
See BOFH.
- "Bitch please, can't you see I'm on my cell phone?"
- "My dog ate my homework, so I ate it."
Note: May only work for Vietnamese or Korean students.
- "I'm sorry, I must have slipped into a diabetic coma from a granola overdose following the school's Tree Hugger Team's Hug-a-thon. Look, I have blisters!"
- "I was out of printer ink and at $3.50/gal I spent all my money getting to Best Buy in the Escalade."
- "I started it, but when I went to node my homework for posterity I started browsing a few writeups and Katyana had this hilarious story which gave me some ideas, so..."
- "Fuck you."
So there you have it! An excuse to fit every occasion, along with some backups for those special cases (#2 and #11).