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Along Life’s Way
Out of Excuses?
A Fable
By Lois E. Wilson
Allie Alibi realized early in life that excuses could help avoid
repercussions or punishment from the results of personal actions or
decisions. She watched how others used excuses. It fascinated her. She
started a journal in which she listed them and filed them by categories
such as: excuses for gaining weight, for being late, for drinking too
much, for not paying a tab, for missing church, for not following
through on a chore, etc.
Allie used early-learned excuses at school. When she was tardy, she’d
offer, “We had a power outage and our clocks got messed up.” She would
also claim that the school bus didn’t wait for her. Anything Allie
could think of she tried to divert blame from her own self.
If she missed a deadline for homework or a class project, some of the
excuses she gave were: “I was absent the day that assignment was made.
I left it on the school bus. I had the wrong due date listed in my
notes.”
In college, her excuse pattern continued. Allie often put the fault of
her lack of accomplishing assigned tasks on her computer system. It was
broken down. The printer was out of ink, or she accidently deleted her
whole project and couldn’t retrieve it.
If fellow students she didn’t like asked her for a date, she would
claim she had other plans for the specific time or was going steady
with someone. At times, she promised to text them an answer. She
disliked face-to-face turndowns, but usually she did not reply. She
hoped they got her silent message and didn’t pursue the matter further.
After graduation, her first position was a paying internship at a
newspaper. A few months into her job, she decided to employ the
personal expertise gained from her chronicled excuses and write an
article about them. She wrote, “Excuses can be a superb way to avoid
unwanted consequences from one’s choices in daily interactions.”
She hoped her effort would earn a byline. Although her editor liked the
narrative, he told her that he wouldn’t print it in the paper until she
improved it by making its ending more positive. Dejected, she returned
to her cubicle and searched through her journal’s excuse categories. It
was to no avail; nothing came to mind on how to satisfy his request.
Allie took her article back to the editor and woefully exclaimed, “I
have no excuse. I don’t know what to do—I’m at a loss for words!” The
editor nodded but did not publish her narrative.
Moral: Those who bemoan the fact that they are out of excuses should be
aware that they have just created a new one.
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