by Kelly Pickering

Created on: July 12, 2008

Excuses, excuses, excuses. One of my teachers used to say this all the time. He never ever bothered to listen to the excuse, the moment he realised that an excuse was on his way he'd start himself: "Excuses, excuses, excuses. Just sit down and get some work done or I'll find an excuse to keep you back in detention." I always found this as something to laugh about until I forgot to bring in some homework...oops. I was going to try to explain that I'd left it near the printer, but for all the good it did I could have said; "The aliens thought it was a very good piece of work and so took it back to their home planet for studying. So as it's so good you can go right ahead and give me an A." Not that it would have worked.

People always feel more secure if they manage to find a good excuse. But what is a good excuse? My alarm clock doesn't work.' Fantastic excuse. Or it would be if it hadn't been used that many times no-one believes it anymore, these days it's no better than: The dog ate my homework.' I guess if you said: I got hit by a car.' (Which is my latest excuse.) Than you would be let off, but that's not an excuse you can use every time you don't show up for work, and you'd have to have the evidence, I mean, you're not going to get hit by a car without it leaving a mark right? Unless it was an invisible car that leaves invisible scars but I don't think that would go down to well with your boss.

It's amazingly hard to find a good excuse but it never takes long to find a bad one. I died and it took god a while to get around to resurrecting me. He was trying to have his supper you see.' One excuse that took me two seconds to make but I don't think many people would believe that. I mean, come on. Would you? But' I did discover that you could find a good excuse another way. I was once late for meeting a friend, because I got lost but I didn't want to tell her that, so I made up an excuse that would make her laugh so much she forgot that I was late. Look. I was on my way down, things were going perfectly, but an Eagle picked me up as her younglings were hungry and had already exhausted the food supply. I know you don't get younglings in the middle of winter but I think this was a strange breed. Anyway, I had to fight for my life, hitting out left and right, not hard like cause there only children, but i managed to escape but before I got back down the cliff some Martians came up and offered me a lift. They just wouldn't take no for an answer...' I went on for a while before dispersing into giggles but I think you get the general idea. This is always a good technique for an excuse, but you need to try it yourself to really understand why...Have fun.

The funny thing is, one day you might be the one getting annoyed, maybe because your boyfriend is late and you're supposed to be going out together. He could say: Sorry honey the traffic was terrible.' Even if it is perfectly true you suddenly hear your voice say quite indignantly: Excuses, excuses, excuses.'

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