Almost 1,000 teachers wrote in to share strange reasons students have given for being late.
Animals were mentioned 207 times overall, and that included seagulls, which appeared 13 times, pigeons were cited 11 times, dogs featured in 27 excuses and cats 13 times!
Food was given as a reason 54 times, only slightly more the number of times toilet-activity featured (52 times!). Police and the law appeared in 14 separate excuses recalled by teachers. Other regular themes included tractors (8 times) and spiders (5 times)…and somewhat confusingly, aliens (5 times)!
The excuses had everyone at the Teacher Tapp office giggling, but here are our favourites:
- The “Cow-in-Waiting” Milking Crisis: “A child had filled a rubber glove with water and tied it around their middle and was pretending to be a cow – they said sorry they were late but they were waiting to be milked!!!”
- The Microwave Knicker Fire: “One boy told me his mum had set fire to her knickers in the microwave and they were late leaving the house!”
- The Uncooperative Fat Cat: “My fat cat went under my bed, but because he’s so fat he got stuck, so I had to try and get him out but then I got stuck too.”
- The Philosophical Delay: “I left on time but made a series of bad decisions.”
- The Post-Drama Fake Tan Wash: “He was washing fake tan off following a drama lesson.”
- The “Hedgehog Fajita”: “A child had the aforementioned animal wrapped gently in their jumper, like a hedgehog fajita.”
- The Very Honest “Trump-Poo”: “Sorry I’m late, I did a trump-poo in the car and we had to go back home for more trousers!” (A very honest 5-year-old).
- The £30 Shirt Sale: “He had to wait for M&S to open to buy himself a new shirt, as a guy at the bus station paid him £30 for the one he was wearing.”
- The Sticky Trousers Incident: “A boy shuffled into my classroom about twenty minutes late and told me he was late because another boy had poured an entire bag of sugar down his trousers… and he had tried to wash it all off but it was just making everything stickier!”
- The Apocalyptic Boat Builder: “I was building a boat for when the world floods, but don’t worry, I have saved you a place.”
- The Pigeon Brawl: “I was having a fight with a pigeon.”
- The Inexplicable Stilts Problem: “I couldn’t get my stilts on and my brother wouldn’t help me!”
- The Dog Saliva Alibi: “Best one was that the dog had stolen his pencil case and he had to chase him around the garden to get it back. He then produced the soggy, dog-saliva-covered pencil case as proof!”
- The Pocket-Fish: “He had trouble getting his goldfish from the locker, and, true to form, he had a hold of a fish in a bag in his pocket.”
- The School-Yard “Crucifixion”: “Sorry, Miss, I was just crucifying Luke,” he said — in a Catholic school where there was a big cross outside the chapel.
- The “F’ing Big Duck”: “Watching the ‘f***ing big duck’ in the car park, which turned out to be a goose!”
- The Dead Bird Funeral: “We were playing football and a bird got hit by the ball. We didn’t know what to do so we took it to the Head of Science. She couldn’t save it and it died. We had to have a funeral and it would have been rude not to sing.”
- The Forgot-the-Kid Drive-Off: “Her parents drove to school but forgot she hadn’t got in the car before driving off.”
- The Spider Wardrobe Siege: “An A-level student was 30 minutes late because of a spider in his room. It hid under his wardrobe and he couldn’t leave until it came back out for fear it would breed in his absence. He happily shared this with the whole class.”
- The Heathrow Airport Detour: “I fell asleep on the bus and ended up at Heathrow Airport.”
