– (your name here)
2) My homework got contaminated with ebola. Turning it in would only put you at great risk.
3) Plate tectonics, need I say more?
4) I was so tired when I did my homework that I inadvertently switched over to the ancient Incan language. Unfortunately, I don’t speak Ancient Incan, so I’ll need more time to redo it in English.
Surly potatoes
5) Lutefisk vendors moved into the neighborhood. Things got ugly.
6) I wrote my homework on edible paper. Then the dog ate it.
7) The dog ralphed the homework back up, but I figured you wanted something with clean, attractive margins.
8) My homework was erased from the hard drive by the NSA before I could print it out.
11) I took a shortcut to school through Boko Haram territory and they burned my homework in hatred for all Western teaching.
12) I got depressed over Sweden’s treatment in the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
13) I’m living backward in time like Benjamin Button. I just haven’t unwritten it yet.
14) The mysterious forces that take single socks from the clothes dryer have switched to taking my homework.
15) Spontaneous combustion. Hoo boy! Good thing it didn’t happen while you were grading it.
16) I wrote it on ancient papyrus. London’s Museum of Egyptology wanted the papyrus back.
17) My homework got sucked into a black hole that’s parked outside my front door. Come in through the back if you want to speak to my parents.
18) There were surly potatoes between me and my homework.
– Paul R. De Lancey, friend of students everywhere.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.