It's something we all have to do. You have an assignment to hand in and it's late, you were supposed to meet someone at 5:00 and it's now 5:30... and there isn't any reason, or at least not one that your going to tell. So then

You have to make an Excuse

And it has to convince that other person to forgive you for whatever you did wrong, by sounding convincing, amusing.... whatever, as long as works.

This entry is intended to supply a list of possible excuses for you to use, to get out of all your sticky situations, but it is continually Under Construction. If you have any excuses for anything, and you don't mind other people using them to get out of their awkward situations, please post them in the forum attached to this entry. Thanks for your help!

I'm sorry I'm late....

If you are late for an appointment or work¹, you might try one of these:

• My sister threw the key to our house into the toilet and flushed it... we couldn't get out
  
  
• I couldn't get past the leopard in the corridor
  
  
• I'm late because the wheel of my car popped.
  
  

  For this, prepare. In advance, make sure your car always has at least one broken tire in the back, and don't hesitate to answer when someone asks you which tire, where, etc. Also, have a good friend to back you up if you ever car pool.

• In the event that you use a dog team and sleigh to get where your going: My lead dog has diarrhea


• By bus: The bus driver got out to have a fight with the bus driver of another bus.²


• My car was struck by lightening and I didn't dare get out!
• My bus was hijacked by evil terrorists, and they wouldn't let us get out. It all ended peacefully, thats why you won't have heard it on the news... they kept it quiet for legal reasons!³
• A failed attempt to circumvent the nature of space-time led to the premature combustion of my alarm clock.


• Well I was having breakfast, and the orange juice container said concentrate!
• I can't come into work today; God pushed a note under my door telling me I had to stay home and pray.
• The man on TV told me to stay tuned.
• I got mistaken for a famous person and had to spend ages signing autographs
• I'm not late, you were early!
• My wombat has herpes⁴.
• The wind was too strong for me to walk!⁵
• I am a rockstar!

I'm sorry I'm Early!

If you're too early you may want to do try offering flowers... not exactly an excuse but a suggestion!


However... if you're really sorry you're early, you might try one of these:

• The buses are normally so unreliable, so I set off early to compensate
• I wanted to ensure that you didn't arrive first and feel silly
• I just had to get away from my room mate as soon as possible!
• I've already got a round in.⁶

I am unable to hand in my homework because...

These are mainly for maths homework...

• I accidentally divided by zero and my paper burst into flames.
• I could only get arbitrarily close to my textbook. I couldn't actually reach it.
• I have the proof, but there isn't room to write it in this margin.
• I was watching the World Series and got tied up trying to prove that it converged.
• I have a solar powered calculator and it was cloudy.
• I locked the paper in my trunk but a four-dimensional dog got in and ate it.
• I couldn't figure out whether i am the square of negative one or i is the square root of negative one.
• I took time out to snack a doughnut and a cup of coffee. I spent the rest of the night trying to figure which one to dunk.
• I could have sworn I put the homework inside a Klein bottle, but this morning I couldn't find it.
• It was Mathematically impossible fo me to do the work in the time between you setting the question and the answer being due in and if you were to give me an extra week I will either give you the homework or the proof of why it is impossible to do.
• I couldn't do the geometry because they don't let me use anything sharp where I live.
• I had the answers on the tip of my tongue but when I licked the paper they just dissolved.
• My dog ate it... but we've given it syrup of figs so you should get it tomorrow.
• I've given up the things I like best for Lent. I really love Maths homework.
• I came up with something really new and Steven Hawking is still looking at it.
• Persuade everyone to withhold their homework⁷ and convince the teacher that none was set.
• If your teacher's records are too good for the excuse above, convince them that the homework was much too hard for the class to do, thats why no-one can hand it in.
• I er... I think I er... Do you think teachers and pupils can get married?
• I ordered pizza, but it didn't come.⁸

Computer Excuses

If you have to work with a computer, you have a whole weath of excuses available...

• Three words: Fatal Exception Error
• But I emailed it to you yesterday!⁹
• The disk is corrupted. For this you might try putting the floppy next to a magnet, or just get a disk which is already broken.
• Take a file of any type which is about the correct size for your work, and rename it to something along the lines of work.doc . When you try to load it up at work, you can say "here's the file, I don't know what happened to it, though!

General Scapegoats

• Blame God¹⁰.
• Blame the superdeterministic nature of reality. Hopefully your listener will be too scared of philosophy to argue the point.

Stupifying the victim¹¹

Another approach to making an excuse is to think of whoever the excuse is aimed at as the victim...

• Stun the listener. If late for an appointment in June or January, say that you forgot to adjust your clock for daylight saving. This works because the listener will find it incomprehensible that someone has been one hour out of whack for three months. Their usual reaction is to pause, say, "....the, er.....day, er........it's, er.....", for a while, laugh nervously and then get on with whatever it is that you are there for. It is vitally important to keep a straight, impassive face though. Nobody can deal with that.

• Pull something off your car (Steering wheel, spare tyre, etc), storm into work scowling and throw the part at your workstation. When someone comes up and asks what happened, fix them with a gaze that could kill rhinos and say, "I don't want to talk about it okay? Just let me do my Goddam job, OKAY?". Nobody wants to wear a steering wheel.

• If you've forgotten to buy a present for your partner, go to a box office and grab a brochure on every opera, musical or sporting event that they may remotely like. Stuff them in a card. In the card, write, "Take your pick".

• Forget. Everything. Everything. Late for dinner?
  
  "You're late"
  
  "Er, what?"
  
  "You're late"
  
  "What for?"
  
  "Dinner. See how one of these plates has food on it and the other doesn't?"
  
  "Oh, I must have dozed off in front of the TV"
  
  "No you didn't, you just walked in the door"
  
  "Did I? Hmmmm...Are you sure?"
  
  "YES! Where have you been?"
  
  "I'm not sure. I can vaguely remember driving. Hang on a minute. I'll go see if the engine's warm"
  
  (Go check. Come back)
  
  "It is warm. I must have driven here"
  
  "Where. Did. You. Come. From?"
  
  "...................the...............car?"
  
  

Excuses you should Never hope to use

This section is based on a true story. Or several.

This happened to The Necromancer of Forgotten Threads:

Well sir, boss, gaffer, Professer, etc. (delete as applicable), my little brother/son, when playing on the computer yesterday, managed to spill some water on the keyboard. He didn't notice this, and then tried to type into the machine. He suffered from a mild electric shock (causing him to spasm and whack his head on the desk and chair edge), which fed back into the hard drive, wiping saved files from several programs. My parents were out at the time (I'm a Year 13 student), and so it was left to me to take my little brother to casualty. As a consequence, not only was my essay/report etc. (which was saved on the hard drive and subsequently wiped) lost, but I did not have the chance to re-write it in time for today. I'm dreadfully sorry , but I was extremely concerned for my brother's health and safety in the light of his accident. I'm sure you understand.

I put an expense claim in once for a 3 day trip that took 5 (it involved being on a sailing ship) - the girl processing it just started to giggle as she read through all the things that had gone wrong (crew deserting 2 minutes before sailing, crew mutinying, having to repair the jetty that we had hit etc) The only thing that she queried was why I had claimed a "missed meals" allowance for the final day, when by her reckoning the train carrying me home should only have taken an hour or so. When I explained that the train had actually caught fire and we had to abandon it, she just couldn't control herself and broke down laughing.

You may also like to visit The Random Excuse Generator.