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Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Teachers Are Revealing The Most Chaotic, Hilarious, And Totally True Excuses Students Ever Gave For Being Late
As many of us can attest to, most late excuses involve traffic, missed alarms, or "not feeling well." But every so often, a reason comes along that's so wild and oddly specific that it couldn't not be true. When u/minecraftplayer48 asked teachers, "What was the best excuse for being late that turned out to be true?' teachers and students alike replied with excuses from burning buildings and rogue goats to stolen safes and MTV challenges. Here are 27 of them: 1."A kid's apartment burned down overnight. He was a little late, but still came." —u/arcant12 2."Told me he got pulled over by the cops for wobbly driving on his bike, and they thought he was drunk. Turned out he was just dodging all the slugs on the street." —u/Fortisvol Related: 3."A very quiet, unassuming kid came into our German class with about five minutes of class left. We went to a Catholic school, and the teachers were all quite strict and intimidating. Classes were usually silent, especially in junior school. When this boy arrived at the end of the lesson, the door flew inwards with such force that the teacher gave an audible gasp. It had been raining heavily outside, and his hair was plastered to his forehead. His blazer was dripping and sodden. He had mud caked into his trousers up to his knees, and he was breathing heavily. The teacher exclaimed, 'Brendan! What happened?' We all stared up at him in shocked silence. This quiet, unassuming little boy let out a big sigh and just said, 'I took a shortcut.' And went straight to his seat. That line became iconic in our school for years afterwards." —u/lestat85 4."In my hometown, if you walked into anywhere late and said the phrase 'Sorry, grain train,' you were never challenged. It was extremely common for 50-plus carriage trains to run through the middle of town." —u/Zeruvi 5."A student once turned in work late after not showing up for two classes. Two classes amounted to a full week, so it was noticeable. The professor looked at him and said, 'I hope somebody died for you to be this late.' The student responded, 'DOES MY DAD COUNT?!' Honestly, I've always heard you can hear a pin drop and never really thought anything of it, but yeah, you could hear a pin cut through the air after that." —u/whereegosdare84 6."A kid missed my first-period class one morning but was in school later that day. When I asked him why he hadn't arrived in time for my course, he said his cow was birthing its calf that morning, so he'd picked being in the barn over English. Made sense to me. His essays weren't going to win any ribbons at the county fair, but his calf could." —u/BobosBigSister 7."We had an exam in my class, and the teacher got a message from a student saying he was going to be late because his car had a flat tire (the student was known to party). The teacher didn't think it could be true, so as a joke, the teacher asked him to bring the tire back. He brought the flat tire back in the middle of the exam. Needless to say, the teacher didn't expect that." —u/Sapang 8."From the UK: A student once couldn't submit an assignment on time as 'the Wi-Fi was down on the Megabus.'" —u/[deleted] Related: 9."When I was in college, my psych professor told us that the only excuse for being late was a funeral procession. For any other reason, you wouldn't be allowed to come in. A few weeks into the semester, I was headed from one building to another, which involved crossing the main road. Lo and behold, there was one very long funeral procession going by. I got a short video of it as proof, then stood on the sidewalk to let it go by. Unfortunately, the procession made me five minutes late for class. I knocked on the door, and the professor came over to start to tell me off. I showed her the video. 'Well, I'll be damned, come on in.'" —u/Jupichan 10."I'm an English professor. One year, a good student showed up without one of his major term papers. He explained his safe had been stolen by a contractor who was working on their house. His laptop was in the safe, and that's where his paper was. I genuinely believed him because he had been a really good student. Over the next few weeks, he started to show up to class looking very tired. He said he was on a hunt for the person who stole his safe, and spending late nights with his cousin, driving around looking for the guy because they knew his van. Now, the student and his cousin were both recently back from tours in Iraq and had seen combat experience. They wanted to find the guy to beat the heck out of him and get the safe back because his wife's wedding ring was in the safe as well as a bunch of cash. He rewrote the paper and turned it in, apologetic that it wasn't up to his usual quality, but he still kept coming to class looking like he hadn't slept." "After a little while, he came to my office hours very happy, and he reported that he found the guy after a long search that involved breaking into a meth den, shaking people down with baseball bats and even bribing some sex workers. He said they found the guy's van at a Taco Bell after getting a tip from a sex worker, and they cornered him and waited for the police to come. I read in the news that he had, in fact, done a citizen's arrest and stopped the guy at a Taco Bell, and that they ended up calling in the Secret Service because he used the cash that he stole from the safe to buy a bunch of counterfeiting equipment. Secret Service apparently investigates counterfeiting, so the whole investigation happened because this guy tracked the scumbag down through the bad side of town late at night to get a wedding ring, some cash and his research paper back. It all turned out to be true. He got the ring and the laptop back. I gladly accepted his original paper, and it got a much higher grade than the rewrite." —u/kidnuggett606 11."'MTV paid me $200 to fill my backpack with cement and carry it around for the day.' I accepted that excuse. The student later regretted it, however, as a replacement backpack and college textbooks far exceeded $200. But he got his moment of fame, and I didn't penalize him for his tardiness. Got to live a little." "Someone found a newspaper article on this. Turns out, he 'earned' $100 for the first day and $100 when he returned the next day. This was 19 years ago, so ha, I was RIGHT to believe him! He still lost all his stuff (thanks, cement), and I remember him telling me it wasn't worth it." —u/surgicalasepsis 12."My best friend and I used to roller skate to school, and one day we both forgot to put our shoes in our backpacks. So we skated to the vice principal's office and got to skip first period to go home for shoes. We stopped at Taco Bell on the way back for breakfast because we figured we were already excused." —u/Grizelda_H 13."I was one of about 20 kids who were late to school. We showed up at the school office as a group, and when questioned why we were late, we said, 'The school bus blew up.' They questioned, 'So the engine blew up?' The kids: 'No, the whole bus, in flames. It blew up.' There was much conference between the teachers, all of them thinking we embellished the story. Next thing you know, one of the admin staff has the news website open, and there's a very obvious image of an entire bus on fire with a bunch of kids in our school uniform standing in front of it. Our late slip for class read, 'School bus blew up.'" —u/AusPB90 Related: 14."I was the student. My neighbor had a really social goat, and she figured out how to escape her pen in order to come over and hang out. She escaped and followed me to the bus stop, and when the bus came, she tried to follow me onto it. I couldn't actually get on the bus without her being right behind me, so I had to get off, bring her home, and call my dad to bring me to school." —u/shoppy33 15."After 9/11, my small-town high school received bomb threats every week for two months, and they decided to make us attend school on a Saturday. About five others and I showed up for our classes, and every teacher said something like, 'I can't wait for the excuses on Monday.' Most of the excuses were something along the lines of 'family plans' or whatnot, but one kid was made to read his dad's note aloud to the class because our first-period teacher thought it was hilarious. In the most down-south accent you can imagine, it went something like, 'My son ain't too smart, but he knows you ain't supposed to get punished for someone else being a dumbass. Bought him a six-pack, so he was drunk. Y'all can mess off.'" "I wish we had smartphones to record back then so I could share it." —u/butterfly_burps 16."Today, a child missed my first hour class. Notes said car accident on the way to school and would be coming late. The kid comes for the second hour and has pictures on his phone of the rollover accident! What the heck, kid? Go home. Rest. Take care of yourself." —u/Sheldon_Turtle 17."This happened to a classmate when we were in college, training to be teachers. She missed a really important class — she came for the last 10 minutes or so — because her neighbor knocked on her door while in active labor and asked for help just before my classmate was supposed to leave for class. My classmate then walked back to the neighbor's house with the preggo neighbor and delivered her baby in the living room while on the phone to 911. The paramedics came, and the mom and baby were fine. However, my classmate needed to go home to shower and change before coming to class because she was covered in blood." —u/Sheldon_Turtle 18."When I ran a preschool in West Philly, one of my teaching assistants told me, 'Sorry I missed yesterday, my friend shot my mom.' Naturally, I was a little speechless. They then said, 'Oh no, it's OK. He was aiming for someone else.'" —u/Scoutnjw 19."'My car got hit by lightning.' It did, in the school parking lot. Her tires were melted to the pavement. She had to go out and deal with the tow truck, call her parents, etc. It was pretty dramatic." —u/mamacrocker 20."A guy in my college class missed class one day. The next day, he came in with his eye covered up and medical paperwork in hand. Apparently, he got pecked in the eye by a chicken." —u/BrrToe Related: 21."One of my good friends went to the Royal Military College of Canada, where they wear their uniforms to class, and there are often tourists visiting the campus. Apparently, it's so normal to be waylaid by tourists looking to have their photos taken with students in uniform that all they had to say when they walked in late was 'tourists,' and the professors would let it slide." "My friend always wondered how many family photos she was actually in over her time spent there." —u/superstartsky 22."Me. My bus hit a bird, and the whole windshield was cracked. We had to wait for another bus to pick us up." —u/Zoggles123 23."When I was student teaching, I was late because there were a bunch of chickens in the middle of the road. They wouldn't move at all. This is in the middle of a city of 200,000 people. Freaking chickens. I finally got to school and profusely apologized to my mentor teacher. When I told her why I was late — thinking it sounded ridiculous — she said, 'Yeah, those chickens are jerks. They surrounded my car in the McDonald's parking lot last year. Don't worry about it.'" —u/Makenshine 24."A student told me he couldn't do the work because he was delivering oil from 3 p.m. until 11 p.m. — in middle school. He wasn't lying. His dad had broken both of his shoulders and one clavicle, so his grandma and pregnant mom were 'switching off driving' (pretty sure he was doing most of it at night), and he was hooking the tanks to the oil. I called all of his teachers and had his workload lightened and got permission for him to come in an hour late each day, as he was providing the only income for his family of eight, since he was the oldest. I also tutored him so he could pass seventh grade." "I paid the cost of oil only for years until I moved out of the area." —u/backaritagain 25."In high school, I biked to class. One day, I hit a rock and ate absolute crud. I obviously got to class late. Before I could say a word, my teacher stopped class and said, 'Thank you for finally joining us. Why are you so late?' I raised my heavily bloodied hands and elbows. It must have looked bad, because she audibly gasped and rushed me to the school nurse, apologizing nonstop the entire way." —u/DatPunk15 26."School sporting event. A kid on our team was late because someone stole his windshield wipers, and it was snowing out. He kept having to pull over to the side of the road and wipe off his windshield." —u/wrstlr3232 27."I had a student whose father had died and had not done any homework or prep for his geography class. From what I heard, the geography teacher scolded him, but the student didn't want to say anything (presumably because it was a sensitive issue). Instead, his best friend shouted at the teacher, 'DON'T YOU HAVE ANY SHAME? HIS FATHER DIED LAST NIGHT.' The teacher replied, 'I don't care.' There was an audible gasp, and I was in the next room. Needless to say, that teacher is no longer employed here." —u/19you1 So, would you have believed these reasons for being late? Alternatively, have you ever heard (or used) an out-there excuse that was true? Drop your stories in the comments below. Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity. Also in Internet Finds: Also in Internet Finds: Also in Internet Finds:
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Bank issues warning over building projects scams after seeing jump in cases
A major bank is seeing a jump in criminals using building works as a ruse to steal customers' money. Criminals may ask for hefty deposits for work around the home or garden to be carried out before disappearing. Or they may make false claims to have qualifications and leave work behind that is severely shoddy or even dangerous. Santander UK highlighted the issue in its quarterly 'scamtracker', which tracks trends in authorised push payment (APP) scams, where people are tricked into transferring money directly to a fraudster. Purchase scams accounted for more than half (57%) of claims received between April and June, Santander said. Within this, there was a 22% increase in the volume of scams involving building works in the second quarter of this year compared with the previous quarter. The bank said this is the fastest rising tactic it is seeing being used by scammers and the most common driver of purchase scams for customers aged 35-plus. A significant jump was seen among customers aged 80-plus, with building works making up more than half (58%) of all purchase scam claims received from this age group, up from just over a third (36%) in the first quarter of 2025. The bank's data also indicated that criminals are homing in on works linked to roofing and gardening or landscaping. Looking beyond just building scams, the scamtracker found that £15.7 million was stolen overall from customers between April and June 2025, which was a 15% decrease compared with the previous three-month period. Chris Ainsley, head of fraud risk management at Santander UK said: 'While the total amount stolen by scammers has declined over the last quarter, don't let this lull you into a false sense of security. 'With longer days and warmer weather, it's a popular time for us all to think about jobs around our homes and gardens, and criminals are capitalising on this, parting customers with more than £700,000 between April and June alone. 'Don't let scammers cast a shadow over your summer and; stay alert to anything that sounds too good to be true.' The bank suggested that, to help guard against scammers, people seek recommendations from friends and family, source several quotes before agreeing to work and be wary of anyone cold calling. It said people should not feel under pressure to agree a deal on the spot. Alongside building scams, Santander also highlighted a growing trend of criminals sending scam text messages purporting to be from organisations such as utility companies, government bodies, or linked to winter fuel payments or penalty charge notices. Fake messages may link to a website that asks customers for their card details and allows criminals to register their card to a new digital wallet. Data from the bank shows that scam claims involving in-app digital wallets have increased by more than 70% in the second quarter of this year, compared with the first quarter, with more than £1.8 million stolen between April and June 2025.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Anti-migrant groups clash with riot police in southeastern Spain
STORY: :: Torre-Pacheco, Spain :: Far-right groups and police clash in a Spanish town as tension flares over migrants :: July 13, 2025 :: It follows days of lower-intensity unrest after an elderly man was attacked by unknown assailants :: Officials have condemned 'hate speech' and 'incitement to violence' :: Abdelali, Resident "We want peace! That's what we want. We don't want anything else. Let's cross the red line! All the neighbors are complaining. I ride my scooter and I'm afraid of being hit by a bottle." Far-right groups hurled glass bottles and objects at riot police who fired rubber bullets. Tensions flared up between local residents and migrants after the elderly man was attacked in the street on Wednesday, causing injuries from which he is recovering at home. The reasons behind the assault are unclear and no one has been arrested.
