A teacher talks about bizarre excuses for tardiness. Some classics include:
“The ceiling in the boys toilets collapsed due to the weight of the vapes hidden inside the ceiling tiles so they had to go to a different toilet”, and “their grandmother was meant to drop them off but went to the wrong school”, not to mention “the wait for Greggs sausage rolls made them late for school.”
Back when I were a whining schoolboy, I think in about 1970, I once made up an excuse for not having done my Math homework. If I say so myself, it was a brilliant excuse (sadly, I cannot recall it, only that it was excellent and could have brought many to tears).
Unfortunately, the teacher was not some rookie, but an elderly man who had been teaching at St. John’s College since 1932, and was not to be fooled. He smiled, and remarked:
“Do you know, I haven’t heard that excuse since the early 1950s.”
Howls of laughter from all the other guys in the class, and Red-Faced Kim had to acknowledge his defeat. However, Mr. Jefferies (“Judge” was his nickname) showed some empathy by not punishing me, because of my creativity.
I always did my Math homework after that.
Show me you received a classical ‘liberal’ education without telling me that you did: you respond to the nickname “Judge Jeffries” with “Hanging Judge Jeffries”. (And you know why he received that name, and roughly when!)
Well, duh.
Jeffries gets a thorough treatment in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle.
Never happened to me, but after watching two grandparents slowly succumb to dementia and a third develop severe memory issues, I can absolutely buy “Grandma dropped them off at the wrong school.”
In fairness, I could muster up some sympathy for the Greggs Sausage Roll excuse.
Me too.