WASHINGTON, DC ― According to reports from teachers in dozens of states, the classic excuse “my dog ate it” has been displaced in favour of citing the futility of studying for a life that will be cut short before college.
“A lot of students have been using it lately,” said Deanna Peters, a middle-school geometry teacher from Cincinnati, Ohio. “And what can I say? Firearms are the leading cause of death amongst American youth. The facts are on their side.”
“The first few times I heard that excuse, I used to tell the kids that they had their whole lives ahead of them, and they couldn’t just throw that all away,” agreed fifth-grade history teacher Sean Fillmore of Orlando.
“But then our governor started harping on about teaching kids only facts, so lies like that no longer fly. Now I just tell them that since they won’t have much chance to make any real imprint on the world, it’s even more important that they maintain some stellar grades so that they have something to be remembered for beyond the appalling manner of their deaths.”
In a country that is averaging more than one mass shooting a day, some teachers have gone so far as to join their students in this phenomenon, blowing off tedious tasks like grading assignments and drawing up lesson plans with the excuse that either they or their students will not live long enough to benefit from such efforts.
Other excuses like “my Grandma died” have also fallen out of favour, given that “my little brother died” now sounds much more plausible and has the added benefit of being good for about four or five uses rather than just two. Meanwhile, in phys-ed, clumsy outfielders largely prefer “any projectile coming my way scares me shitless” to previous generations’ “the sun was in my eyes.”
In related news, a teen who had failed to complete his third essay in a row was offering the justification that he was “only going to shoot myself and everyone in this fucking hellhole tomorrow anyway,” but he probably didn’t mean anything by it.
