Z
AP! A mysterious lightning bolt struck many
members of a North Korean sports team, leaving
no visible marks, but wiping out their skills.
That’s how coach Kim Kwang Min explained
his team’s failure in a women’s soccer tournament. His
team never recovered after having been “struck by
lightning”, he claimed.
Mr Kim wins a place in our World’s Wackiest Excuses
list. He comes from a country famed for creative factoids.
Former premier Kim Jong-Il picked up a golf club for the
first time in 1994, his biography says. He shot a hole-in-one
11
times. Then he gave up golf. Why can’t I do things like
that? The only time I tried golf, I couldn’t even hit the ball,
let alone send it in any particular direction.
Creative escape
Creativity doesn’t just help you
at
work, it helps you
avoid
work, says father-of-three
Nury Vittachi
.
excuse used by people working in chilly places is this:
“
My apartment was so cold that my hair froze after I
washed it.”
Many of the best lines sent in came from the education
community. Best excuse for non-delivery of homework: “I
fell down and have a huge bruise on my butt. Wanna see?”
“
Eww, no thanks,” the teacher will surely say.
Best excuse for late delivery of homework: “It’s only a
day late, and if there is an infinite amount of time in the
universe, then one divided by infinity is zero, so it’s actually
on time.”
A prize for creativity should go to the student who said:
“
I was out walking my dog when this UFO came down and
the alien said, ‘My ship runs on Year 11 homework.’ What
could I do? I handed it over.”
Science students always have the best excuses for
non-delivery of work, since their assignments often include
creating things. Top three:
1)
My homework ate the dog.
2)
Government agents took my homework as they think I
may have discovered a cure for cancer.
3)
I did my assignment on this new invisible paper I
invented and now I can’t find it.
Work in an office? Simply phone the boss from home on
a Monday morning and use this line from a BBC best excuses
contest: “I am caught in some kind of space-time continuum
loop and I am re-living Sunday. As soon as I can reverse
polarity I will be in to work late, or maybe early.”
I have an over-sized friend who is always late and says:
“
There was a bad headwind.” He always makes the same
joke, and we always laugh. It’s become a sort of tradition.
But, in general, medical excuses work best. If you’re
running late, enter the office slowly, saying: “Constipation
has made me a walking time bomb.” No one will get in
your way.
Nury Vittachi writes a regular humour column at
www.mrjam.org
.
It’s only a day late, and if
there is an infinite amount of
time in the universe, then one
divided by infinity is zero, so
it’s actually on time.
Remember the football World Cup? North Korean
coach Kim Jong-Hun said he was getting tips from Kim
Jong-Il through “an invisible cell phone” invented by the
Dear Leader himself.
Anyway, many readers wrote to share creative excuses
after this columnist wrote about the subject. The title of
Best Excuse for Speeding goes to a Swiss man stopped by
police on a highway in Canada, according to a newspaper
report. Why was he going so fast? “Because of the absence
of goats,” he said. There’s no answer to that.
In cold countries, the weather provides great excuses. For
example, if you fail to go to work, you call your boss and say:
“
I dropped my car keys in the snow and I’m waiting for the
temperature to warm up so I can find them.” Another good
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