The candle burned up my homework

Thursday I was an English teacher. One of the students was not journaling. When reprimanded, he said, “I don’t have a pencil.”

I said, “That is a lame excuse! You need to become more creative.”

Suddenly, my mind was back in my eighth-grade English class.

When we were seventh graders, Mrs. Redman had told us that she’d been teaching for over 30 years and was just a couple years from retirement.

“If you can give me an original excuse for not finishing your homework, I’ll give you an A for the day. But if you give me one I have not heard before, you’ll receive an F.”

We tried a few times to get by with excuses, but never found one she had not already heard.

In our eighth-grade year, we had a very bad snowstorm that knocked out power for a week, even for those of us who lived in town. Those who lived on farms were without power even longer.

When school resumed, Andy said that he hadn’t finished his homework because “I was working on it with a candle. The candle fell over and burned it up!”

Mrs. Redman burst out laughing. “I’ve never heard that one before! You get an A for the day.”

He said, “Can I get two A’s for the day? I really did my homework and was just joking.”

He got the second A.