Teachers Share The Most Ridiculous Excuses For Missing Assignments Students Ever Gave Them

Most students have at one time or another fibbed about whey they were unable to complete their homework assignments.
Hey, things suddenly come up.
But there are certain excuses that just raise skepticism – or in some cases – are very entertaining.
Xplosion101 asked teachers on askReddit:
"Teachers of Reddit, what is the most ridiculous excuse for unfinished homework that you've ever heard?"
Klepto Grandma
"A kid (high-school) claimed that he couldn't do his homework because his grandmother wouldn't give him back his textbook...which she had taken in retaliation for his theft of her wooden leg."
Twice Dead
"I had a student in my online class tell me his grandma died twice. I know, I know, some people have two grandmas die but this dumb f'ker PASTED THE SAME STORY in an email to me twice. The first assignment was in week two and the student sent an email telling me all about how his grandmother has been sick with cancer and this week she 'Finally succumbed to the disease' so the funeral would be this week and he was wondering if he could get extra time."
"I said sure, I am so sorry, that must be awful, let me know what I can do to help and I gave him the extra time. And then later in the class the final paper was due and the motherf'ker sent me the SAME CUT AND PASTED EMAIL! I read it and it said his grandmother 'Finally succumbed to the disease' and I was like, wait a minute, I've read this before. Yep, email from week two, same exact email. Made me wonder how many classes this kid had done the same thing in. Probably most of them."
Hungry Slugs
"I've got the opposite story. A teacher lost my homework he marked as he left it in his shed and it got eaten by slugs."
"He did show me the slug eaten paper, and gave me full marks for it so it wasn't all bad!"
The Parrot Debacle
"One kid told me his pet parrot flew onto the fireplace and caught on fire. It then proceeded to fly around the sitting room and the dad tried to hit it with a frying pan because he was afraid the curtains would go up in flames if the parrot went close to them. The dad hit it onto the kitchen and then grabbed it and threw it under a tap 'because you have to throw a parrot under a tap if it's on fire.' He then said with all the drama he'd forgotten to do his hw. Of course I let him off because it was the most creative story he'd come up with all year."
Surgery Side Effect
"The student claimed he put it in a room in his house. He then forgot the room existed. He was at a loss to explain where his homework was. He was upset to think he must have imagined doing it. He apologized to me."
"The next week to his amazement he 'found' the room, and more amazingly he found his homework. He handed it in that week.
"Now this may seem like nonsense, but it turns out he had an operation to remove a tumor from his brain when he was ten. One of the outcomes was a strange side affect that for a short period he could utterly forget a room or more in his house."
"True story. Confirmed from his mother and sister."
Deleted File
"Been a teacher for 2 months, with a lot of submissions being online due to [the virus] protocol, I've had the following exchange with many, many students."
"Hey, why didn't you submit the online homework I set?"
"I e-mailed it to you, it must have not come through"
"That's unfortunate, would you mind e-mailing it to me again before the end of the day?"
"I can't, I didn't save the work"
"If you didn't save your file, how did you try to e-mail it to me in the first place?"
"No.. err, I meant I deleted the file after I completed the work, I didn't think I would need it anymore"
"Well, in the future avoid doing that, at least until you have confirmation that I have it. Either way, you should be able to find it in your sent mail, assuming you attached it it will should still be there"
"Visibly panicking Errrr, I deleted my sent e-mails too"
"Wow, you're incredibly efficient. Well, unfortunately I can't grade you on your work unless I receive it. Seeing as you've already done it before, at least doing it a second time should be a breeze"
"Rinse and repeat... I'm a dude in my 20's first year out of uni. Do they really think I'm that technologically dense?"
Mad At Dad
"I did the homework the day you gave it to us (which is one week ago), except that I did in an old rough copy of mine and yesterday when I got back from school, dad sold all of our old stationaries for petty cash. I was so mad at my dad, I didn't do my homework to teach him a lesson. Could you please call home and tell him about this?"
I couldn't help but laugh xD
Edit: I called home and told his dad to get him a chess set, because this guy can think."
Proud Granny
"Taught instrumental music down in South Texas, so I basically never game any sort of homework outside of practicing."
"6th grade - gave the kiddos a super basic theory sheet to complete that was due back in two days since I had a dentist appointment the next day."
"When I'm collecting the sheets, a trombone kid tells me 'My grandma stole my homework in Mexico and wouldn't give it back.'"
"Turns out they were visiting his grandparents over the border outside Matamoros and his grandma really wanted something of his to hang on her refrigerator, so she took the homework he had just finished and put it up. Kid protested, but she wouldn't relent, so he snapped a pic as proof."
"Graded the sheet from the picture. Kid got an A. I got a story."
Just Tired
"Not a teacher, but we had a report due and I waited until the last minute like always. I slept through class mostly and one day I was abruptly woken up and asked for my report and I said half-asleep, 'I didn't do it because my mom died.' The teacher was disgusted that I would say something so cruel and sent me to the principal's office. The teacher was called into the principal's office after they found out I wasn't joking and was so apologetic. I wasn't trying to be a jerk about it, I was just tired."
– icunicu
Her Anatomy Class Final
"Had a student get badly injured in a terrible car crash. She had to have surgery on her face. MOST of us excused her from finals. Some teachers made her come in. Her face was all swollen and her mouth was hanging like she'd had a stroke because she hadn't had the surgery yet. I told her that her surgery was her final for Anatomy since she was learning more about practical application of anatomy than I could teach in class."
People Describe The Weirdest Rules They've Encountered Because Of One Person's Actions
Don't pee in a pool.
Like... who did that so that it had to become a rule?
Who was that dumb?
Rules are rules, and there are many good rules.
But so many rules are just arbitrary because some idiot chose to be... well, an idiot.
RedditorGoogunkwanted to hear about the times we've all been hindered because someone else was a mess. They asked:
"What stupid rule did your work have to make because one idiot ruined it for everyone?"
I've always hated rules implemented because of other's nonsense.
No Kissing
"Not at a workplace but at a summer camp (YMCA). Only children under the age of 9 were allowed on the playground due to the fact that 2 older kids (don’t know how old they were) were caught kissing on the playground."
Puppet007
Yes, creepy dolls...
"Only one personal item in your office. This was a financial institution so customers came into our offices. This was put in place because of one lady who had her office packed with trinkets including a handful of dolls. Yes, creepy dolls. Come and get your auto loan also don't worry we have some dolls here to witness your transaction."
luminescentbluedot
That went nowhere...
"A video game company I worked for provided free snacks and sodas. One Friday HR had just done a shopping run and was bringing in a truck load of junk food. One employee was caught sneaking a case of soda out of the parking lot. He wasn't fired or disciplined, it was just made public why the perk was ended. He quit shortly afterward and attempted to sue for a hostile work environment. That went nowhere."
DarrenEdwards
Pringles Please
"No popcorn. I work at a financial company and not once, but twice, someone burned microwave popcorn during end of day processing and caused the building evac. Every once in a while a new person is cooking some up and I just imagine the talking to they're about to get."
katrascythe
"We had this, but with microwave ramen. Someone managed to try to microwave it without putting water in. Twice."
_MaddAddam
Fun Over
"We used to get a free beer after our shifts at a pizza restaurant I worked at, until the manager’s little brother got in a car accident after work (he ran a red light or something). That was fun while it lasted."
boi-juice
I thought rules were designed to make sense.
Ask First
"Well, I went to the Dr office the other day. At the bathroom there was a sign. It said 'Due to misuse of hand soap, you will have to request soap from front desk.' I'm weirded the f**k out. What the hell are they doing with the soap?! At the doctor's office?? I was just too afraid to ask."
Ok-Reporter-2688
Get a Manager...
"At a restaurant I worked at needed a manager override to make any price adjustments, remove items, or process certain cash transactions. This was done because another service found a way to discount their own meals or something. Anyways, this was a huge problem for everyone because there were only two managers in the whole restaurant, and often only one was on shift at a time."
"So when it would get really busy, which happened almost every night, it was next impossible to get a manager to help you out. Often times they'd scream at you for asking for help, meanwhile your tables are getting pissy because they've been sitting there for 15 minutes waiting for me to cash them out, and I can't do anything about it."
"So between my managers yelling at me and getting stiffed, the job because insanely stressful. I quickly put in my two weeks and got the f**k out."
14thCluelessbird
Confrontations
"We used to be able to pop in an ear bud at work with the offset being that we couldn't spend more than a few seconds here or there to switch podcasts or something. Naturally, some people took a mile and spent minutes on their phones. Since everyone was afraid of confronting these people, phones and earbuds were banned in work spaces altogether."
DYGTD
"OOPSIE"
"If you derail a train you have to get drug tested. In my time at that company members of my team caused 3 derailments. After the second one, the employee's official statement was 'oops, no further comment.' It was operator error and the guy owned up to it."
"After the third one, the guy driving hops out and screams 'OOPSIE.' He was being a real prick about the problem he just caused. So we ended up rewriting the drug testing policy to drug test the guy, and sure enough he failed. So then he was gone."
thedankbank1021
Damn Bob
"Former boss here. My total pet peeve was company wide memos about 'behavioral' problems that were really about a single employee. Not on my watch! Supervisor has a problem with “Bob”? F**king talk to Bob. That draft memo is not going out. I feel your pain y’all."
Rules are made to be broken. Especially stupid ones.
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We as a people have been throwing shade for generations.
And it's only getting better.
An insult lands better with finesse and wit.
Let's get creative.
Redditorfuturesbloodlinewanted to hear all the best shade we have to throw. So they asked:
"What is the most creative insult you've been told that you couldn't even get mad at it?"
I still love a good, subtle... "Bless Your Heart!"
Drive On
"During heavy fog, I was driving extra cautiously. My passenger looked at me and said:"
"'There's a funeral home out there somewhere looking for you to be their hearse driver.'"
Back2Bach
Roll Down
"Student asked me, during sex Ed, about the bar code that printed near the base of every condom. I said I didn’t know that condoms had barcodes like that. He smiled and said, 'Oh, you don’t gotta roll yours down that far, huh.' I laughed and told him that was one of the funniest things a student ever said."
this_name_is_banned
Scrambled
"My step-sister can be kind of an airhead. On Christmas one year, her dad gave her something that required her to set the day and time. She asked him what day it was. Her dad just laughed and said 'oh honey, you could hide your own easter eggs.'"
Celesticle
"Sounds like a burn on people with ADHD. My apartment is filled with surprises I accidentally hide from my as elf."
Flyingwheelbarrow
God Draws
"Overheard 'I might be fat but you look like something God drew with his left hand.' I still giggle when I think about it."
forevertwoc
"Speaking as a lefty that can't really draw and isn't really artistic, this kinda stings."
PitBullFan
"Well there's the whole 'The Right Hand of God' thing. So I guess some have taken that literally"
shewy92
LOL
"I don't know why but my friend called me a dense liquid once and it was hilarious to me."
maybe_spoopy
Some of you are savage AF. And I am living....
Let it Dry
"It was a rainy day, I was at a construction site for labor work, I had nothing to do so I was just standing there next looking at the dirt mounds around the site. Some fella walks pass me and says 'what’s your job, watching dirt dry?' Cheeky."
Ike_The_Sir
I See You
“'You look like someone who enjoys pro wrestling.' At the time, they were absolutely right."
sanibelle98
"It's one of those things where yes, a lot of it is stupid bullsh*t, but one can appreciate the better stories they've told (Undertaker being a good example), and the olympic skill it takes to be 7' and 300lbs while managing to do acrobatic flips and NOT hurt anyone. It's genuinely impressive."
Bacxaber
"As someone in the pro wrestling business, never be ashamed of being a pro wrestling fan."
MaskMan193
So Pretty
"My great grandma used to say you can’t be pretty and smart on the same day. When one of us would do something dumb, she would pat us on the shoulder and say 'you look so pretty today' and usually the person would take it as a compliment from Gran and not realize until later."
SneezyMcBeezy
Shout
"My mom ‘shouted’ at my brother in the kitchen to go get his laundry cause it was sitting in the dryer getting wrinkled and he replied without hesitation 'yeah well you’re sitting on the couch getting wrinkled so.' It didn’t go well lmao."
DarkWing2274
"Nah, unlike my father my mom isn’t violent. she just said 'this is why amber left you.'"
"Amber was my brother’s girlfriend of 5 years, and on the night he was gonna propose he found out she’d been cheating on him for 3 years with like 8 different people. amber sucked anyway, i didn’t like her, so i’m kinda glad but he’s still depressed about it."
DarkWing2274
Cheap
I asked a bartender 'What’s cheap and has a lot of alcohol in it?' And he said 'You.'"
NickyAndretina
I have a whole new list of shade to share. Thank you.
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If zombies arrived right now, none of us would be shocked.
The way the world has been working, I think most of us would be like... "Sounds about right..."
So maybe we should prepare.
I feel like there is a lot of detail shows like "The Walking Dead" ignore.
When we're not squabbling with the undead... what do we need for the day to day.
RedditorHouseGrasswanted us to get prepared... just in case. They asked people to divulge...
"If a zombie apocalypse were to happen, what is an issue people don’t think about?"
So far my biggest concerns are banks and the liquor store. Tell me more...
Enemies
"There are so many flies. Flies."
Acceptable_Floor166
"Flies eat dead flesh - they'll be zombie enemy #1."
JustAnotherFool896
Yuck
"The smell. You ever see them movies where the cops find a corpse and they puke because of the smell... of one dead body? What's the smell going to be like when:"
"A huge percent of the population is decomposing and walking around everywhere. Or if you kill them, lying there not getting buried... just lying there getting more stinky."
"No refrigerators so all existing food in everywhere is going to rot."
"Toilets will eventually stop working so you have that to deal with."
"That and diseases other than being bit by a zombie and lack of medicine to treat them."
_ImNoJedi_
Get Soap
"Hygiene. A lot of people take the fact we have easily accessible soap and don't realize just how easy it is to die from a small infected cut without it."
Wolf-Track
"I've thought about this in every zombie film/show I've seen where two characters have sex. They're sweaty, dirty, sometimes covered in blood and zombie guts. That has absolutely got to give you a serious infection, and you won't even be able to find antibiotics to treat it. Yuck."
lovelyxcastle
Power
"Batteries. I’m one of the few left who is watching fear the walking dead. Just saw someone use a flashlight YEARS after sh*t started. 2 weekends ago when our power went out, our flashlight from last year had dead batteries."
funnylooking09
"Most batteries sold these days advertise a shelf life of 10 years. But a battery sitting in a flashlight is likely to drain faster than one sitting in a box."
industrialScreen
Easy Death
"Simple illnesses such as strep throat."
Zkenny13
"Diarrhea will be a potential death sentence again."
Crabtoe
The basics are always the things forgotten in the movies and shows.
The Collapse
"Uncontrolled release of toxic and hazardous materials as a result of industrial facilities collapsing due to a lack of continued maintenance."
"Dams collapsing and flooding out everything downstream. Power plants overheating or pressurizing and detonating. Toxic chemicals seeping into the water table or aerosolizing in fires. We made a world that we can only survive in if we keep it going."
Stentata
Can you write me something...
"Your prescriptions. I personally don't take any meds daily but i know people who do and would eventually die without them. Even if you broke into a pharmacy or something the meds would only last you so long. If you're lucky the zombies will decompose until they die but it's never safe to assume that will happen."
CitizenOfInnistrad
Bad Ideas
"Sex in the zombie apocalypse is just overall a terrible idea. Becoming pregnant means you need more food and are much less agile, both major detriments. Even if the baby does get born, that new human is now going to be slowing you down, a hassle to take care of, quite loud and zombie-attracting, and cannot work or contribute to the group, but is still another mouth to feed and water."
MaeBeaInTheWoods
How to Fuel...
"Gas expires."
Link22_22
"'The Last Man on Earth’ explores this after two years I think. He pours petrol from a can and it comes out kinda lumpy. One of the other characters points out that he warned everyone that this would happen and they should’ve been setting up solar panels which is what they do next. Obviously it’s not 100% accurate and it’s a comedy series but it reminded me how fossil fuels would become useless after a while."
reecedutoit
$$$
"It's not gonna be good for the economy."
Flintz08
Well that is a solid list compiled. I'm ready. Just need liquor.
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Gunshots. Car accidents. Stalkers.
I've avoided them all by mere seconds.
But I'm not unique.
Every day we all live a balance between life and death.
Redditor TheWingsterwanted to hear about the times we've all thought we were about to leave this Earthly plane but found ourselves still breathing. They asked:
"What moment made you think 'yup, I'm dead,' but you survived?"
I believe we all live moment to moment literally just surviving. So let's hear about when death is being loud.
A Goner
"Briefly trapped under the raft while in rapids white water rafting. Didn’t get the breath I thought I would when my head hit the bottom of the raft. Thought I was a goner. A second later I was to the side of the raft and only mostly still freaking out."
spaceman_danger
Stop Smoking
"I was 11. I had just developed asthma and my mother refused to quit chain smoking in the house. One night I have a severe attack. I'm trying to use my rescue inhaler and its not working. Each time I try to inhale it just goes right out my nose. I panic."
"I vividly remember my mother smoking a cigarette as the panic is giving way to hypoxia. She's screaming at me to use my inhaler. Right before loosing consciousness I realized that was it, I'm dead. There wasn't a whole lot of life to flash before my eyes. A sense of calm and peace settled over me as I collapsed."
"My parents did CPR on me until the paramedics arrived. I woke up in ICU days later with a tube down my throat. The doctors were surprised I survived. My mother never smoked in the house again after that. The car was still fair game for her though."
Saiyanman007
Lungs
"I was choking on food, almost a full blockage and couldn't get any air in. After several attempts to get it out, it sunk in that it was really lodged in my throat and I was screwed. Started to feel dizzy and everything moved slowly. I remember thinking what an embarrassing way to die and that I didn't want my kid to be watching (it was at breakfast)."
"I started dialing 911 when my husband came up behind me and started first aid. He got the blockage out and I started vomiting everywhere. It was very intense. I still went to get checked by a doctor to make sure my lungs were clear because I felt dizzy for hours after and my throat was raw. Took a day or so to heal. He 100% saved my life!"
shadowball46
Oh Crap!
"When I was a 6th grader I was cutting plastic with a box cutter, knife slipped and sliced a 6 inch long and .5 inch deep cut into my wrist, cut almost every vein and the tendon some people have, my first thought was oh crap I’m bleeding, followed by me running to the bathroom and then slipping on the blood and smacking my head of the floor, knocked out and somehow lived."
sovietsexyboi
Just a Graze
"I went under the wheels of a semi while riding a bicycle. Trapped for 2 hours until they cut my bike apart around me. Walked away with a graze on my leg and elbow."
PokesPenguin
How in the world? My stomach is in knots.
Lived to see another day!
"Squished in the middle car of a multi-car highway accident."
"Air bags deployed/car totaled/smelled burning scent (not sure what it was but assumed the car was about to explode). And stuck in the fast lane on the highway as other cars whizzed by this cluster-f#% at high speed. Lived to see another day! Felt extremely shaky from adrenaline for hours afterward…"
LBinSF
BOOM!!
"House explosion, 3 years old Edmonton, AB. I vividly remember standing next to a stove that someone was fixing in the basement apartment of my Dads friends house (who we were visiting) and next thing I was opening my eyes in in the daylight outside. I completely blacked out while the gas stove exploded and I landed clean in the driveway. My dad and mom were on the front page of the Edmonton Journal 1993."
"I remember distinctly thinking the brightness was heaven and that I had died and fell into heaven- my baby sister had died several weeks prior to SIDS and my mother and father had to explain where she had gone and I thought I was in heaven but it was the sky."
AD_Skinner_no_shirt
So mission accomplished...
"Car accident. We hit a patch of ice and went over a guardrail and off a 40 foot cliff. I knew was dead the moment I pulled my leg free from the piece of door stabbing through it and the blood came out like a faucet. I figured I could at least climb back to the road for help before I passed out so I did."
"I flagged down a passing truck and passed out and died in the ambulance before they brought me back. The firefighters used my blood trail to find my friends car which saved his life. So mission accomplished."
Shes_dead_Jim
fade to black...
"Had a car crash into my house and hit me when I was a child. I was sitting on the couch at the time and it hit me, drove through the next wall into the garage, then came to rest on top of my lap, pinning me down to the couch with it's full weight. I wont go into too much detail about my injuries: suffice it to say that it was pretty gorey."
"It took over an hour for the emergency responders to get me out from underneath it. That hour is foggy at best. I remember so much pain, and at some point I felt this overwhelming sense of peace about the situation. Like, I instinctually knew that all I had to do was let go and the pain would stop."
"I started to let go, and I began slipping away. The pain stopped, the world slowed, and everything started to fade to black. It felt like I was floating on water, and all the fear and agony was taken far away from me. I snapped back into myself to the sound of a firefighter yelling at me to stay awake. Immediately the pain returned and I was fully 'here' again. Didn't hit me until much later in life that I was interrupted in the middle of the death process."
Apprehensive-Donkey3
"I'm laying in the hospital right now typing with one hand. I found out a few days ago that I remained conscious enough to call 9-1-1 myself even though I don't recall doing that. Pretty much the only reason I'm alive is because I didn't injure my head."
FormerUniform
Good for all of you. Do great with the rest of your lives.
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