There are always going to be times where you don’t want to do what others are trying to get you to do. It could be at work, or it could be when you meet an old acquaintance on the street. It could be your parents want you to clean your room. If you feel you need to get out of some activity, you may be tempted to use some lame excuse. We’ve all heard “My dog ate my homework”, and we can all guess how effective that one is with the teachers. Just as effective as “Honest, officer. I just picked that baggy up on the sidewalk and I was going straight to the police station to turn it in.”
Excuses are lame by definition. Basically, there is no excuse for excuses. So how can we turn them around and make them cool?
Simple. Admit that they are lame by trying to out-lame all other excuses. If you get asked to go to a Slurp Fest Soup Cookoff and you hate soup, don’t try to get out of it using the standard “I’d love to, but my grandmother died.” Go straight into,” Soup traumatizes me. My Grandma just died last week. She choked on some soup. I will never go into a room with soup again! Go! Hang out with your soup Nazis. I am going to go visit my Grandma’s ashes in the garden. We sprinkled her on the lettuce row.”
If your boss wants you to work late and you don’t want to start a bad precedence, don’t even mention your kids and their school activities. “ I’d love to, but my girl Petunia has a piano recital,” gives your boss the impression that next time, you will work late. If you want to put your foot down, use something like “I really can’t. My dog is teaching me to bark tonight.” This lets your boss know that you don’t really have any reason to say no, and you really don’t want to do the work. Or, your boss is gullible. The next day he might ask you to demonstrate what you learned. This would be highly entertaining to everyone, but maybe not appropriate in a work setting.
Here’s a couple more. Feel free to create your own cool excuses.
“I have to pick an outfit for my meeting with the President of The United Countries of America.”
“Yellowbeard the Pirate told me he’d kill me if I ever hung out with a scum sucking land lubber like you.”
“I ‘d love to go hiking with you, but I’m allergic to sunlight. It makes my throat close up, and then I burst into a dazzling ball of flame! Whoosh!”