Tue, 04 May 2010

No Excuses

When it comes to writing excuses for school attendance, I borrowed a page from my mother's parenting handbook. After years of providing the same boring boilerplate excuse for her four sons' absences ("Please excuse [X]'s absence yesterday. He was sick.") something snapped, and she decided that to be worth writing, school excuses must be made interesting. One later example I remember was when Jeff asked for an excuse to get out of a gym class requirement one day because of an injury. She wrote: "Please excuse Jeff from any activity more strenuous than thinking. His toe hurts."

This morning, Ursula handed me a stack of excuses I had provided for her one day back when she was in middle school. She's identifed some online purpose for them and so asks that I scan them for her.

As I recall, that middle school morning she had asked me for an excuse to get out of after school band - she didn't say why.

I dashed off this note:

Ursula was not amused. She wanted a Real Note.

So I tried again:

Still no joy.

So I again returned to the well.

Ursula was doing her best impersonation of exasperated, but I thought I detected the barest hint of amusement. Or maybe I was just projecting.
"Would you just give me a usable excuse, Dad?"
I protested. "But you haven't even told me why you want the excuse".
"That's because I told you yesterday - I have a recital this afternoon."

"Oh. That changes things."

"No."

"How about this?"

"Lame."

By now, I was pretty sure she wouldn't be using any of these fine excuses, so I attempted a final hail mary to justify my efforts

Success. She laughed. (We'd recently watched The Matrix and Neo's quote had pleased us.)

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