No Excuse

We all make excuses.  We make excuses when we do something that we shouldn’t have.  We also make excuses when we don’t do what we should have.  Well, maybe some of you out there avoid making excuses.  Maybe you always do what you say you’ll do, do it when you should and never make any mistakes in the process.  Right.

I’ve been thinking about the kinds of excuses that folks use as they go about their daily lives and, since I’m a scientific sort of guy, I’ve divided the excuses into three categories.  The categories are pretty broad because I didn’t want to think too hard.

The first category is the “I had no idea!” type of excuse.  This category is a tricky one as it obviously points the finger of ignorance at one’s self.  That often elicits sympathy from the offended person because it automatically puts them in a position of intellectual superiority.  It’s hard to be angry at a person who is calling you a genius.  Comparatively speaking.  I use this style of excuse all the time.  My wife will say “Why didn’t you put the trash out last night?” and I’ll reply “I had no idea it was trash day.”  And she’ll say “It’s been Tuesday nights for seven years now.”  My clever excuse “I had no idea.”  She feels smart and sorry for me at the same time.  Forgiveness flows.  This category of excuse is very popular among government officials when caught raiding the treasury.  “I had no idea it was illegal to fund this fact-finding mission to Costa Rica with money from the Health and Human Services budget.”

My next broad category of excuses is the ever popular “I’m sorry, but my bad back (shoulder, knee, hip, ankle, elbow, etc.) won’t allow me to help with the fund raising project.”  Of course the defective body excuse is useful for more than just fund raising projects.  It can be used when the wife wants her husband to attend a social function that is particularly odious.  Or it comes in handy when the friend who helped you remove a fallen tree needs the same kind of assistance in his yard.  There’s a subgroup in this category especially reserved for the female gender and that is the PMS excuse.  A woman might say “Sorry I was so incredibly rude to your mother last night but I was PMSing at the time.”  That excuse is very versatile and it’s a shame men can’t use it.

Finally we have the “I didn’t get the email (memo, phone message, text, etc.)” excuse.  This one doesn’t need to be true, just believable.  It works best when there is no paper trail and in these days of paper-free communications there’s pretty much no way it won’t work.  For working people this is the workhorse of the excuse portfolio.  (Did you notice how many times I used “work” in the last couple of lines?)  We retired folks can’t avail ourselves of this one as often unless we’re avoiding certain tedious family functions.  “Sorry I missed Uncle Barney’s funeral, but I never got the email announcing that he croaked” And it nearly goes without saying that politicians and other government types depend on this excuse almost as often as the “I had no idea” variety.  “We needed extra security at the embassy?  I never got those emails.”  You can see how useful that is.

I just now thought of another category that is very useful in avoiding blame.  It’s the “I’m sorry but I’m old now and I don’t remember so well anymore” excuse.  I would have brought it up sooner but, well, I’m older and don’t remember things as well as I used to.  I can get a lot of mileage out of that excuse.

Now, excuse yourself and have a fine day.