The Dumbest Excuse You've Ever Heard

I can’t go out. *Cough* I’m sick.

Earlier this week, over 220 British people contacted employment law experts to inquire about compassionate leave because they were so upset about Zayn Malik leaving One Direction that they didn’t want to go into work. This, no matter how much you love 1D, is a bad excuse to get out of something. But I’ve bet you heard worse…

For this week’s Pissing Contest, we’re covering the dumbest excuses that you’ve ever heard. Bonus points if you heard it because you were the one saying it. Whether it’s because they (or you) missed a deadline, wanted to get out of a test or was late to something doesn’t matter—just so long as the explanation was incredible and dumb.

And now for the winners of last week’s The Worst Way You Found Out They Cheated.

The Great American Letter by Truman Chipotle:

I was seeing one of my longtime best guy friends (whom I’d kissed a couple times over the course of our friendship, but had just started, like, being with in any more significant capacity). He told me that he loved me quickly. The whole thing was very intense. I’d been hearing rumors from mutual friends that he was seeing other people – I asked him about them without too much concern, because since he’d been there for me during a previous relationship (which had been RIDDLED with very painful infidelity) and knew how sensitive I was to cheating, I seriously doubted he’d pull the same thing. He flipped out – stormed out of the room, came back, and professed his deep, deep hurt that aftereverything he’d seen me go through, after all the unconditional support he’d given me over the years, that I could even ASK him if he’d purposefully deceive me. I felt awful. I dropped it quickly.

Fast forward to a couple weeks later, the night before one of Classics exams (which counted for 75% of my total course mark for the semester): I get a Facebook message from one of the girls he was rumored to have been sleeping with saying she’d heard he was dating me and had been asking him about it and he’d been saying we weren’t together but she didn’t believe him. She apologized profusely for having done anything wrong. My blood ran cold. I called him and he PUT ME ON SPEAKERPHONE so his friends could like, mock me? For not having known? I don’t know, it was sort of hard to hear everything they were saying but it was super shitty and I felt small and stupid and sad. I was really upset, and I failed my exam.

He was supposed to meet me to apologize but never showed up – he ended up leaving me a couple drunk, sobbing voicemails on my birthday and, at one point, sent me a very poorly written, self-indulgent letter exploring his own emotional response to the whole experience. In said letter, he asked not for me to reply but for me to send his letter back because “it was a great writing sample and it was [his] only copy”.

Still friends with the girl though. She’s cool.

Nurse Jack-Off by digbette:

About seven years ago I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I was lucky in that it was fairly isolated so they just chopped that sucker out, but I was devastated by the treatments. Just.. so so sick. An old friend of mine (we’d shared a really shitty apt in NYC in my early 20s and during this time she and I had had a brief relationship which makes all the following even weirder…) had just lost her job as a nurse and was having a tough time making it. We decided she should come stay with my partner and I as he was busy and I needed a lot of care but didn’t want to hire a nurse. So, free room and board for her while she sorted her shit out, and someone to get me my pills on time, etc. Seemed ideal!

She was there for 4mo altogether and I was fairly wasted on medication and general lethargy for most of this time, but I did notice a very strong… bond… forming between her and my partner. I went from “Oh well I’m glad he’s got someone to hang out with” to “what the fuck is going on here” very, very slowly, but I got there. I came home from chemo one day and there was a no question about it “someone has been fucking here” smell and atmosphere. I just felt crazy by this point. I sat my friend down and said to her, “You’ve got to tell me if you’re fucking him. I don’t even care at this point, but if you’re not, I need to go and see a shrink because I’m so convinced you are that it’s becoming an obsession for me”. She patted my hand and told me she was so sorry I was getting upset, but yes, should probably go see someone.

On my birthday, ON MY MOTHERFUCKING BIRTHDAY!!!!! we all went out for dinner. He was acting all weird and I hadn’t been out in months and was nervous myself, and kept asking him what was wrong, etc. She was getting very, very drunk and started saying, “we have to tell her, we’ve got to tell her” to him, while I sat in a mist of oxycontin and over stimulation thinking, “well, it can’t be that they are together because I asked her and she was really nice about it and we’ve been friends for so long but what is this?” etc. In the end she breaks down, tell me they are IN LOVE and had been waiting for me to feel better before they told me.

I puke into my bowl at a very fancy restaurant and then leave. He spends a month or so trying to get back with me. She fakes a suicide attempt and he goes back to her. Eventually they move to Canada and break up when she pulls a knife on him during a fight about … something.

My Little Catfish: Cheating Is Magic by Rapunzel Fitzherbert:

My husband of three years started watching My Little Pony. And I was like…okay. Whatever. That’s fine. Until he started verging into brony territory. And then I got a bit concerned.

Long story short, he left his twitter signed into my computer, I logged in…and I discovered that he was pretending to be a sixteen-year-old female fan of My Little Pony. And he was using the name, photograph, and basic information of one of his female Sunday school students (he used to teach in the youth group.) And he had entered into a relationship with a seventeen-year-old boy. And they role-played pony sex via twitter DMs.

When asked about it, my husband shrugged and said “I dunno why I did it.”

The worst part was telling the poor misguided teenage boy that “Emma” was really an asshole manchild in his midtwenties who worked part-time at Gamestop and lived with his in-laws. (He was later fired from his “dream job” for handing out unauthorized discounts because he “wanted to be nice.” Meanwhile, I worked as a teacher five days a week and in a bridal shop the other two. And we lived with my parents for two years because he was fired from his job before Gamestop and couldn’t afford our own apartment anymore.)

The ultimate worst part was staying married to him for two more years. Thanks, conservative Christian upbringing that forbids divorce.

Congrats, everyone! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to duck out early because I have to perform an exorcism at my sick grandma’s house and my dog ate my crucifix. Happy pissing!