"Hey, Mr. Kotter, I got a note!"
For the record, healthy breasts are my favorites.
During basic training in 1968, the night guard ‘discovered’ my footlocker lock [gasp] unlocked and reported it.
For the next several days, my crime (and punishment) were undisposed. When the next poor SOB in the barracks screwed up, we were ushered off to CC....Correctional Custody....where we were submitted to 4 hours of general abuse, water abuse and a variety of other demeaning treatments.
The next day, the Sergeant stood us all in formation and asked me if I’d like to say what happened (he wanted everyone to know the what failure brought) I said “No Sir!”
The other guy (someone I’ll forever think of as a -—well, you can imagine) detailed the encounter at CC with excruciating detail....
Later, having kept the stupid lock, I found that it would open easily if pulled - with no key. It was defective.
When I was a freshman, during the ending of the second semester, someone stole by bookbag during exam time and I still made all of my exams. I did have to borrow the calculator from my physics professor.
While the emphasis in this article is on excuses in academia it sorta misses the central point - too many kids these days are ethically and rationally bankrupt. They do and say things without thought to consequence, and when they are reminded of those consequences they typically shrug it off with indifference.
I have a niece that I think the world of and constantly shake my head at. She’s fallen in with a group of losers and recently posted pictures on the Internet of the gunshot wound she got in the leg like it was the coolest thing to be an active participant in a drive-by shooting.
When her grandmother (my mom) passed away she wanted to live-blog it on Farcebook from the hospital. When I asked her to put her friggin phone away show some respect she got indignant and argued with me. I honestly do not know if she realized how inappropriate her behavior was.
All I know is that I’m the bad guy for stifling her expression.
Back in high school (1970) seniors could write their own notes. I imagine some were pretty entertaining. Mine were all true, of course.
“The death of a loved one has become such a facile excuse that the “dead-grandmother syndrome” is an inside joke for many instructors.”
In my case, when I used it, it was actually true.
When I was in tenth grade my boyfriend (now husband of 21 years) moved to another state. The day after he moved, I refused to go to school. My dad wrote me a note that said “please excuse my daughter from school, she was lovesick”.
My homeroom teacher excused the absence and gave me the note back. Last week, I was going through a box of old keepsakes with my children and I found that note. They thought it was adorable.
I used to work at a place that had an employee who was notorious for making excuses for being absent or late, and the excuses were so atrocious that they were usually funny- so much so that one of the supervisors kept an informal collection of them. The entertainment value of these excuses was apparently high enough that the guy never did get canned for his transgressions.
He left under his own steam about the time I was hired, but that supervisor kept the legend alive by complaining about subsequent excuses from the rest of us, insinuating that we were uncreative by comparison… after which he'd rattle off one that he considered apropos (and ludicrously unlikely).
Mr. niteowl77
"Hey, Mr. Kotter, I got a note!"