21 teachers share the most ridiculous excuse for unfinished homework they've ever heard.

Young people are creative by nature. And never more so than when they're coming up with an excuse for why they didn't finish their homework. "My dog ate my homework" had its moment. But today's young people have taken excuse-making to a whole new level.Someone asked teachers of Reddit: "what is the most ridiculous excuse for unfinished homework that you've ever heard?"These 21 teachers share their stories of bizarre, creative, and wild excuses for late homework—some of which turned out to even be true!1.) From TrufflesDuVall: A kid (high-school) claimed that he couldn’t do his homework because his grandmother wouldn’t give him back his textbook...which she had taken in retaliation for his theft of her wooden leg. 2.) From ledgerdemaine: The student claimed he put it in a room in his house. He then forgot the room existed. He was at a loss to explain where his homework was. He was upset to think he must have imagined doing it. He apologized to me. The next week to his amazement he 'found' the room, and more amazingly he found his homework. He handed it in that week. Now this may seem like nonsense, but it turns out he had an operation to remove a tumor from his brain when he was ten. One of the outcomes was a strange side affect that for a short period he could utterly forget a room or more in his house. 3.) From Mintyboy4: Been a teacher for 2 months, with a lot of submissions being online due to covid protocol, I've had the following exchange with many, many students. "Hey, why didn't you submit the online homework I set?" "I e-mailed it to you, it must have not come through" "That's unfortunate, would you mind e-mailing it to me again before the end of the day?" "I can't, I didn't save the work" "If you didn't save your file, how did you try to e-mail it to me in the first place?" "No.. err, I meant I deleted the file after I completed the work, I didn't think I would need it anymore" "Well, in the future avoid doing that, at least until you have confirmation that I have it. Either way, you should be able to find it in your sent mail, assuming you attached it it will should still be there" "Visibly panicking Errrr, I deleted my sent e-mails too" "Wow, you're incredibly efficient. Well, unfortunately I can't grade you on your work unless I receive it. Seeing as you've already done it before, at least doing it a second time should be a breeze" Rinse and repeat... I'm a dude in my 20's first year out of uni. Do they really think I'm that technologically dense? 4.) From BlooooContra: Taught instrumental music down in South Texas. 6th grade - gave the kiddos a super basic theory sheet to complete that was due back in two days since I had a dentist appointment the next day. When I’m collecting the sheets, a trombone kid tells me “My grandma stole my homework in Mexico and wouldn’t give it back.” Turns out they were visiting his grandparents over the border outside Metamoros and his grandma really wanted something of his to hang on her refrigerator, so she took the homework he had just finished and put it up. Kid protested, but she wouldn’t relent, so he snapped a pic as proof. Graded the sheet from the picture. Kid got an A. I got a story. 5.) From Billbapawpaw: I was a TA during uni. They sent me an email: Sorry - computer is broken I’ll need an extension. This was early 2000s - so where were they emailing from? If it was the computer lab well then - that’s where they could do the assignment. 6.) From kindsoberfullydressd: I’ve got the opposite story. A teacher lost my homework he marked as he left it in his shed and it got eaten by slugs. He did show me the slug eaten paper, and gave me full marks for it so it wasn’t all bad! 7.) From Longjumping_Highway7: The fifth time the same student said he lost his homework running from a dog that was chasing him on the way home. 8.) From the_angshu_man: "I did the homework the day you gave it to us (which is one week ago), except that I did in an old rough copy of mine and yesterday when I got back from school, dad sold all of our old stationaries for petty cash. I was so mad at my dad, I didn't do my homework to teach him a lesson. Could you please call home and tell him about this?" I couldn't help but laugh 9.) From ksiyoto: "I sent it by one of the major express companies, and they told me that the package had been opened and emptied. They checked their security cameras at their hub center, and found nothing. They are just as baffled as I am." 10.) From PossiblyTrueInfo: "I ran out of pencil ink" 11.) From not-read-gud: Not a teacher. My little sister ate my homework in the first grade and no one believes me 12.) From Cap_ultimate: Not a teacher, but one of my classmates said that their dog ate their homework... she has a cat the homework was online... 13.) From Ok-Bit-9338: this country has a couple long weekends, but the students want to get a couple more days off on top of it. so on like Tuesdays and Wednesdays before the holiday i start getting messages about people's dead grandmothers. it's never the grandfather. how many grannies are dying out there? I am gonna starting asking for a picture of the body. 14.) From mizboring: The new version of this is just uploading a blank document to the online drop box and playing dumb. Gee, professor, I'm not sure why that's blank. How weird! Isn't that weird? Well, here is my paper two days after the due date... 15.) From orstius: This is a little off topic but the question reminded me of this. Back in 2nd grade in the mid 80s for me, I had a mean teacher. One time I didn't do my homework. She asked why and I told her I didn't feel like doing it because I had a headache from listening her talk all day. She gave me a paddling, which was the norm back then. She then asked me if I was going to start doing my homework. I told her no because my butt hurts now. I'm going to have to tend to that when I get home instead of doing homework. It was worth it because it made the class laugh. 16.) From wetmath000: A student told me she had a bad dream about her cousin taking her and her dog on a roadtrip in a ferrari? I never quite understood how having a dream about a ferrari roadtrip made someone not be able to complete work. 17.) From sallan23: This is legit and too ridiculous to be a lie (This was from a parent at the Catholic high school where I taught at the time.) (paraphrasing because I can't find the original which I kept) "Please excuse the late homework. Our pet cat defecated on it." And yes, defecated was the word they used. 18.) From wetmath000: A student told me she had a bad dream about her cousin taking her and her dog on a roadtrip in a ferrari? I never quite understood how having a dream about a ferrari roadtrip made someone not be able to complete work. 19.) From geoffraffe: One kid told me his pet parrot flew onto the fireplace and caught on fire. It then proceeded to fly around the sitting room and the dad tried to hit it with a frying pan because he was afraid the curtains would go up in flames if the parrot went close to them. The dad hit it onto the kitchen and then grabbed it and threw it under a tap “because you have to throw a parrot under a tap if it’s on fire.” He then said with all the drama he’d forgotten to do his hw. Of course I let him off because it was the most creative story he’d come up with all year. 20.) From Rufus_Everard: "I was mugged on the way to school and they took my bag with all my homework in it." "What's that on your shoulder?" "..... It appears to be my bag, sir." 21.) From ElZarigueya: "I broke my back." As she walked towards my desk. I believe she was going to give a different excuse or at least mention a different body part but the panic overwhelmed her and she went with her back. Both sadly and hilariously I couldn't help but give her a "are you dumb?" face.