When I was a teacher, sometimes all it took to start the day off right was to receive a written excuse from home regarding a recent absence or tardiness. One gray winter morning early in the year, Billy* came rushing into my classroom an hour late. He blushed as he handed me a note from his mother, grabbed his books, and hurried off to his math class. I opened the note written on a piece of Billy’s notebook paper, and read:

Dear Mrs. Mayhew,
Please excuse Billy’s tardiness. He was helping his father catch our pig (they didn’t succeed!) New Year!
Mrs. Stevenson

As all junior-high teachers know, a sense of humor is essential for teaching the eighth grade. If you can’t laugh occasionally at the antics of your students, you may end up crying a lot. As the children themselves are so varied in their levels of maturity and intelligence, so too are the homes from which they come, and the notes they bring from their mothers reflect this variety.

I taught language arts to grades six, seven, and eight in the Edgartown School from 1966 to 1986, and I saved the most original excuses, which illustrate not only humor, but also despair, displeasure, impatience, and brevity.

Pigs are not the only animals that delayed or detained my students from their classes. Horses were more common. An active and popular 4-H riding club taught young girls, mostly, responsibilities that they might not have learned in school. The girls used to rise in the morning early enough to walk or ride their bikes to the barn in order to feed and turn out their horses before school (although on dark and cold winter mornings, parents often provided taxi service to this end). Come spring when the horse-show season began, the girls were only too willing to put in extra time and hard work for their steeds.

Dear Mrs. Mayhew,
Sally was absent yesterday, with my permission, to give her horse a bath for the horse show.
Sincerely, Amanda Brown

Betty was out of school Friday afternoon with our permission. Beetle needed a bath!
Marian Shepherd

Please excuse Ellie for being late this morning. She had to help put all the horses back in the pasture after their escape.
Theresa Moore

If a horse show had ever been held on a weekday, I’d have lost 30 percent of my class!

When a child is home sick for a day or more, mothers show great diversity in composing the written excuse. Some indicate a more subtle message to me by the stationery they use. I received excuses on everything from formal stationery to tiny, torn-off scraps of notebook paper.

Mrs. Mayhew,
Katie was home this morning with cramps, sore muscles, and headache.
Mrs. Black

This message, written on Peanuts stationery, shows Charlie Brown in the upper left-hand corner hanging from a tree by his feet, which are tangled up in his kite string. The caption says, “On certain days it is best not even to get out of bed.”

Other excuses for children’s illnesses range from bare facts to explicit details that I might rather not know.

Dear Mrs. Mayhew,
Please excuse Sarah’s absence on May 28 on account of general malaise.
Mary Lennon

Dear Mrs. Mayhew,
Harvey was absent last week because of a pugnacious viral illness that would respond to nothing but a large dose of time and rest. There is still a deep, juicy cough associated with the bug that hangs on, but the temperature has stabilized. Please, no gym the remainder of the week. He can use the time for the considerable pile of make-up work awaiting him.
Betsy Lawrence

Dear Mrs. Mayhew,
John will be absent today because the cold he had has decided to come back (congestion, cough, phlegm).
Melissa Norcross

Once in a while a student would forge an excuse or alter it in some way. In the note below, Jimmy was not pleased with the way his mother expressed herself, and took it upon himself to cross out the last sentence of his excuse. He was unsuccessful as I was still able to read it, but I respected his feelings and did not do as his mother requested.

Mrs. Mayhew,
Please excuse Jimmy for being absent this morning. Last night he came down with a bug. Also, please make it a point to give him his make-up work. Tie it around his neck!
Mrs. Carney

One child who was consistently absent in the mornings and turned up in the afternoons without an excuse finally brought me one that covered everything.

Mrs. Mayhew,
Teddy missed school a few times in the mornings.
Sincerely, Mrs. Peters

And, occasionally, a note would say what happened, rather than why.

Linda stayed home this morning.
Cathy Holmes – Happy Spring!

Most mothers are honest and would put the blame for an absence where it belonged – which wasn’t always with the student.

Dear Mrs. Mayhew,
Please excuse Ruth for being absent this morning. Can you believe that I forgot to wake her for school? Well, that is just what I did!
Doris Wynn

The purpose of a written excuse from home is to confirm that the parent knows that a child was absent from school. And so my favorite excuse was one written in beautiful, cursive handwriting – brief and to the point.

Mrs. Mayhew,
Please excuse Michael’s absence yesterday.
Sarah Dewey

That is all that needs to be said, but the pigs and the horses and the juicy coughs did bring smiles at the beginning of days that may well have needed them.