Teachers Share The Weirdest Excuses They've Ever Heard That Ended Up Being True

OMG

"I had a sixth grader come into class very sleepy during test day. I asked her why and she said she is sleeping next to her dead grandma in the living room and has been too scared to sleep.

I asked her parents about this, turns out it's a cultural practice of theirs to keep a dead relative in the home for a few days while their spirit makes it journey to the afterlife.

To answer some of your questions: She was from a large Hmong family that lived in an small apartment. She also mentioned before the grandmother passed her family attached bells to the grandmothers clothing to scare away the spirits that were making her sick."

bornking2007

Now THAT'S an excuse.

"We had a kid in our class who was pure chaos. Came late all the time, forgot stuff, didn't do his homework, disruptive in class... you get the picture.

One day he came to school over two hours late and said the bus he was on fell into a sinkhole. Everybody was like "yeah, right", until the news came in that there had indeed been a sinkhole from a tunnel construction and that indeed a bus had slipped into it.

We never found out whether our classmate had actually been in it, but he swore he was."

NewWorldCamelid

Rats!

"My pet rats dragged my history homework into their cage and "modified" it to fit in with the aesthetic of their shredded-paper nest.

I told the teacher the next day who didn't believe me until I could get my dad to vouch for me.

Teach was all 'Well if she wasn't lying, why didn't she bring the remainder in as proof?'

My dad: "'Because the papers were shredded and covered in rat urine.'"

pm_me_chupacabras

Oof.

"One of the girls I know from Uni works in a college (here college is a name for vocational school), and one of her groups of students jokingly said "they died" when someone was absent from classes.

So one day it went morbidly wrong when she asked why, say, Dave was absent, the group replied that he died, she laughed and said "okay, but seriously" and the class was just silent."

savageexplosive

Otherwise, that would've been a really bad excuse.

"I gave this one.

I was in college. I went back to my house between classes only to find my roommates barricaded inside by police.

Why, you might ask?

There was a bull moose in our side yard and the fish and game people were VERY concerned.

So my lab isn't until 3 or something, and meanwhile there's like 8 officers having a standoff with a moose in my yard.

This continues until someone decides that the moose is an imminent threat and they're going to try to tranquilize it. So they try that and it fails. So now they're going to kill the moose.

It gets to be about 2:45 and I need to leave for my class and I'm summarily informed by the armed officer that my lawn is not safe and I'm to stay inside.

So I emailed my prof and was like "look I know you're not going to believe this but I'm barricaded in my house and they won't let me leave. I assume this will be on the news tonight."

Turns out it WAS on the news - they interviewed me - and I got an exemption on that lab. He told me later that he was going to 100% fail me because it was the worst excuse ever until he saw the news story.

(In case it wasn't immediately obvious, yes, this occurred in Vermont, because where else would this be a problem?)"

Alterageous

Hooray for technology.

"As a graduate TA for undergrad students I was teaching an online course and all assignments had to be submitted by midnight. A student emailed me (this is important) and said her internet was down and she couldn't submit the paper. As in logged into her email on the internet to email me that her internet was down.

The way the class was run, if she didn't submit the paper by midnight she got a 0 for the assignment.

I replied to her email (remember - her internet is down) that if she brought me a hard copy of the paper she could still get her grade. She shows up at my apartment 10 minutes later (I hosted study groups in the community room) with her hard copy paper and a half-melted internet router. She had emailed me from her smart phone that she had for her internship (this was early in the smart phone surge and few people had them).

Girl got her grade and we're still in touch! She proved herself to be an incredibly dedicated student and is now in graduate school herself!"

gore_schach

Now that's cool.

"I had a student who told me he was going to miss one of the exams because he was visiting a famous rapper in Florida with his family.

He told me that the rapper, who at the time was a relatively big deal, all over the radio, was his cousin and his family was flying out for a show and he couldn't skip it.

I mean, I would have let him make up the exam anyway, I don't really care as long as he takes it. But all his peers and I were kind of like "Yeah, right...okay, whatever you say man."

He was telling the truth. When he got back from Florida, said famous rapper Skyped into our poetry class and chatted with my students about poetry and lyrics and such. It was actually really cool."

SalemScout

Why improve on a classic?

"Not a teacher, but my dog literally ate my homework in high school. I had to read the Great Gatsby in English and I remember my teacher asking me where my copy of the book was.

I told him my dog ate it and he gave me that "really, bro?" look. Took out the completely destroyed copy and the expression on his face when he realized I wasn't lying was priceless."

chewwster

That's rough.

"Obligatory 'not a teacher but' someone I went to school with who was late a lot came in one day talking about how he was watching the news.

Yeah right, 'David'. And why exactly were you watching the news?
Some plane had just flown into a building in New York.

My 'where were you' moment is sitting in Social Studies class listening to a kid tell the most obvious lie he had ever told.. only for it to be the truth."

Zaaqen

Literally swam to the test.

"I was the student in this case. I was a new driver, headed to school at the crack of dawn to take an AP exam. For those not familiar, attendance is critical for these exams and you absolutely must show up on time or call the exam proctors to let them know you're going to be late. This was also central Texas in the middle of May, which is prone to torrential downpours

So, being a new driver I didn't want to take the highway so I'd just take a little farm-to-market road every day and figured it'd be fine. It was not. It was backed up to all hell because a portion of the road had flooded but Texans being Texans, people were still crossing anyway. So a 15 minute commute became 35. I'd failed to write down the proctors' numbers so I had no way to let them know I was going to be late.

I got to the parking lot about ten minutes after it was supposed to start. It had been raining so hard and the parking lot had such poor drainage that there was at least 6 inches of water covering the ground. And horizontal rain. Even with my umbrella I walked into that exam soaked from mid thigh all the way down, my shoes making a "squish, squish, squish" noise with every step.

Exam proctor: Why are you late?

Me: Sorry, the road was flooded. I had to swim through the parking lot

I was at least able to take the exam, though I was freezing. And before anyone jumps on me, yes I now know how dumb it is to walk or drive through a flooded area, but high school me didn't."

casstantinople

Solid excuse.

"I have a cousin who went to his math class and turned in his homework without any proof showing he worked on the problem. When asked why he didn't show his work, he responded with, "A NASA rocket scientist showed me a better way."

Well no one believes him, until they called his dad and he had to explain they had a family friend from out of town staying at their house and yes he was actually a NASA rocket scientist."

IncoherentPenguin

Poor frog.

"Not a teacher but I got a frog stuck in my printer just before I was going to print an assignment. This was before email-submitted assignments were standard. Got an extra day because the professor had never gotten that excuse.

Also, HP sent me a new printer."

horror_unfolds

That's horrible.

"Elementary Teacher here. I had a student tell me that her mom got mad and ripped up her homework. Naturally I didn't believe her. Weeks later at a parent conference the mom actually admitted doing so out of spite because the two had gotten into an argument and that she hoped it went against her grade. From then on I believed the student.

For the remainder of the year she tried her best to turn it in, on occasion I would receive the shreds of what was left of her completed homework.

She got a pass for the rest of the school year, whether it was turned in or not."

FishyGoRawr

That's gotta be a whole lot of trauma.

"Mini unit on Lizzie Borden. (That sounds weird, but it was part of a news/investigative reporting unit for a journalism elective I teach.) Student told me she was having trouble focusing on the lesson because her dad is an axe murderer so it was bringing up a lot of memories and feelings.

Googled his name and yep, she wasn't lying."

whateverreddit88

Logic checks out.

"I failed to show up to class one time and this is the true story I told my teacher.

I was in my electronics lab and the power supply kept making this horrible buzzing/grinding sound. I'd smack it and it'd shut up for awhile before doing it again. Now, you're thinking this was my alarm clock and I was dreaming about being in the lab. And you're quite right. The thing is, in this dream I was a gigantic grape with arms and legs and a face. So once I realized that it WAS my alarm clock and I needed to get to class I was still enough in the dream to think I was still a grape. And fruit doesn't have to go to class. So I didn't.

The teacher stared at me for about 15 seconds and said "I wish I was a grape." and not another word was said about it."

gandolffood

Mercury in retrograde always screws everything up.

"That she couldn't finish the assignment in time because the planet Mercury was in retrograde motion.

She was correct, it was in retrograde.

I love this one. But I still downgraded her assignment for being late."

technocassandra