When I was a kid in school and for one reason or another had to stay home my Mom used to have to write an ” excuse ” so that I could get back into class.

I don’t what it’s like now days with the texting and e-mail, but back then if you forgot your note you had to sit in the office  and wait for the secretary to call home and get the excuse over the phone PLUS a promise to bring the written note the next day.

I wasn’t absent often, but I often forgot or lost my note because

well

because I thought my Mom wrote the most lame excuses ever.

Please excuse Anita Marie, she had a cold

( face palm! )

I would have written:

Please excuse Anita Marie, the exorcism didn’t take- we had to do it over.

I know some kids were mortified by parents who wore funny clothes or sang stupid songs or drove uncool cars, but those notes written by my Mom?

Gads.

So the upshot was I spent time in the Office waiting for someone to get a hold of my Mom- which was no small thing because in those days she worked in a processing plant and someone would have to find her and then give her the message and then they had to pull her off the line and she had to get to a phone and call the school back.

I remember thinking as I watched the secretary’s face how glad that I wasn’t on the phone listening to whatever it was my Mom was saying right then. My Mom didn’t yell or swear. But she chose her words well- which was a shame because it was that particular way she had of communicating that resulted in her awful boring notes that I was expected to hand over on her behalf.

” She was mad, wasn’t she? ” I asked sympathetically.

” Yes. She Was. Very.”

I sat there, usually next to some kid or kids waiting to see the Principal.

Those kids fascinated me. They were real trouble makers and one of my favorite trouble makers who always seemed to be there, I guess now that he had a standing appointment or something like that-  He was about 11 years old and he smoked. Buddy wasn’t stealing his unfiltered smokes from his Dad- he stole them from his Mom and she had a tatoo.

This was in ’74 and it was the suburbs so Buddy’s Mom was very unique.

” What’d you do this time?” I asked.

Buddy would fill me in and then he said, ” Fed your note to your dog again?”

” Yeah.”

” Anita? “

” What.”

” Your excuses are lame.”