40 Teachers Share Unbelievable Student Excuses For Being Late That Turned Out To Be 100% True

I apologize that I'm writing this on mobile, so there might be errors. I'm an English professor, and one year a pretty good student showed up without one of his 2 major term papers. He explained that 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 believe him because he been a really good student.

Then over the next few weeks, he started to show up to class looking very tired. He said that he was on a hunt for the person who stole his safe, and he was 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 s**t 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 very happy to my office hours, 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 prostitutes. He said that they found the guy's van at a Taco Bell after getting a tip from a prostitute, 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 who I dub "the white Shaft" 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.

Middle school boy was late because he watched his dad become a citizen.

This happened to me as a pupil; a very quiet, unassuming kid in our class came in to German with about five minutes of the 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 came into class at the end of the lesson that day, the door flew inwards with such force that the teacher gave an audible gasp.

It had been raining heavily outside, 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.

"Sorry Bohemian Rhapsody came on just as I parked." - My art teacher when he was about 5:55 minutes late.

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.

Former student here.

"Sorry, boss, my stepdad tried to [take our lifes] last night and I had to deal with the cops".

Professor just looked at me for a moment and said "....dude do you want to like, go grab a drink and talk about this after class?"

Man, my English prof was a bro when I was in college.

When I was student teaching, I was late because there was bunch 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 get to school and profusely apologize to my mentor teacher and I told her why I was late thinking it sounded ridiculous. She said, "yeah, those chickens are f**king a**holes, they surrounded my car in the McDonalds parking lot last year. Dont worry about."

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.

When I was in college, my psych professor told us that the only excuse for being late was a funeral procession. 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 to 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, c'mon in."

She had to take her sister to school and drive her mom to rehab. She was always late to class because her mom just wanted to sleep in. Problem was if the mom was late or did not go she would have violated her probation and gone to prison. I never marked her late. If she missed anything important she could come in at lunch or after school to make it up.

Hmmm, I had a student whose father had died and had not done any homework or prep for the geography class, from what I heard the teacher scolded him for not doing so but the student didn’t want to say anything (presumably sensitive issue) so his best friend shouted at the teacher “DONT YOU HAVE ANY SHAME, HIS FATHER DIED LAST NIGHT” and the teacher said “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.

Not me but in my class.

This was in College, a student turned in work late after not showing up for two classes. Two classes amounted to a full week so it was noticeable.

Professor looked at him and said "I hope somebody passed away for you to be this late"

"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 f**king pin cut through the air after that.

This one happened to a classmate when we were in college training to be teachers. She missed a really important class, came for just the last 10 minutes or so because her neighbor knocked on her door while in active labor asking for help a little while before she was supposed to leave for class. Classmate walked back to neighbor's house with preggo neighbor and delivered her baby in the living room while on the phone to 911. Paramedics came and mom and baby were fine, but classmate needed to go home and shower/change first because she was covered in blood.

Had a Sociology prof in college who was never late for anything. One day, we showed up for class and he wasn't there. After five minutes or so, we are reading the handbook to find out what level of Professor he was and found that he was an Associate professor and entitled to ten minutes wait. A few seconds before his time expired, a voice came from under his desk saying "Today we are going to discuss withdrawn personalities." He conducted the whole class from under his desk.

Kid was late to school and had to miss a very important football game. The reason? His fat Pug fell asleep on his phone. The pug’s fat rolls muffled his alarm.

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, 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".

I had a six year old turn up late to her lesson and blurt out "sorry I was late, I had to colour in a bunny!"

Seems fair.

My auto teacher let me practice removing and adding the tires on his vehicle. The next morning it was about 20 minutes into first period and no sign of him. He comes running into the classroom out of breath and his hair is all messed up. He points at me and says "YOU!!!! What is a torque wrench used for???" I respond with "I don't know." He says "I know you dont know!!!" Turns out one of his tires came off while driving down the highway.

Student told me he couldn’t do the work because he was delivering oil from 3PM until 11PM. In middle school. He wasn’t lying. Dad has broken his both of 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 his teachers and had his work load 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, as he was the oldest. Tutored him so he could pass seventh grade. I paid cost of oil only for years until I moved out of the area.

Not a student, but one of my Teaching Assistants when I ran a pre-school in West Philly... 'sorry I missed yesterday, my friend shot my mom'. Naturally, I'm a little speechless... 'oh no it's ok, he was AIMING FOR SOMEONE ELSE'