8The Excuse
Billy Kanish woke one morning at eight,
Having forgotten his project was due on this date,
He grimaced, now knowing that handing it late
Would make his teacher grow very irate.
But Billy, being ten, had some tricks up his sleeve,
He'd figure a way to make her believe
That it wasn't his fault! His grades shouldn't grieve
Over something that couldn't be avoided by he.
So he scurried to school without worry, or care,
Sure that when Ms. Jones began her questionnaire
He'd be able to pull excuses out of thin air,
And be given an extension, right then and there.
"You're ten minutes late," was the first thing he heard,
The weight of held anger pressed into each word.
The whole class held their breath; even Johnny the nerd
For they knew his excuse would be large and absurd.
They were in for a treat; this one would be best,
Far more fanciful, fantastical, than all of the rest,
Lined with plenty of intrigue and details, lest
He failed to make his innocence convincingly stressed.
"It wasn't my fault," he began with a smile,
"But that crazy old lady up the road one half mile.
The one whose huge house always smells like aged bile
Because of those cats that are there all the while."
"I'll tell you a secret; she's a witch, I say!
And lured me from my desk where I'd been working all day
On my project for you 'bout King Henry the Gray,
Before making me join in her spell-casting fray."
Ms. Jones scowled, and said with a frown,
"I don't believe you one minute, you lying young clown."
"But please! I implore you, there's more that went down
In the house of that witch whose teeth are stained brown."
"I was pulled to the back of her lawn by the spell.
It's a horrible place, with a rancid old smell
Seeping out from the thorn bushes wrapped 'round an old well;
I was sure I'd been pulled through the windows of hell."
"There were monsters, vampires, werewolves and more!
All the terrible creatures of nightmares and lore
Were gathered together, right there, and what's more,
That crazy old lady had begun to snore!"
"She'd left me alone with those monsters so scary!
Some big, some small, but most of them hairy.
Some were blue, then some yellow, (kind of like a canary),
But I knew all would eat me if I wasn't wary."
"I had to get out; that much was quite sure,
So I grabbed some large pork chops I'd seen on the floor
And started to use them in order to lure
Them to where she'd gone asleep not too long before."
"They were so hungry by then, they all grabbed and bit,
But they missed the chops and ate the old nit!
With the spell being broken, I intended to split,
But then all went dark; as black as a pit."
"Well," Billy sighed, "The next thing I knew,
I was back in my bed, and I'll tell you
It was quite a shock to have had to go through
That encounter with monsters both yellow and blue."
"So you see, dear Ms. Jones, I am not to blame.
Just to tell you the truth, is the reason I came
When I could have stayed home and slept in, all the same."
She raised an arched brow, thinking his story most lame.
"If there's one thing I hate, it's a liar," she said.
At her words, he started to fill with deep dread…
"You will not be excused, but failed, instead."
And with that, any chances of passing had fled.
So the moral of this story is don't try to pretend
If you've forgotten to work, because, in the end
You will not convince them; need proof? Just send
A letter to Billy, my old grade school friend.