Sick Excuses

Today is Monday, which means it's time to break out the old list of sick excuses and see what might be brought to the fore.

The exercise of collecting sick excuses began during a project I was on earlier this year. I was facilitating a client meeting and had my laptop plugged in to the projector. Several attendees were giving a nod in the direction of fashionably late, and while I chatted with the on-time participants the conversation turned to the subject of humorous sick excuses. It seemed nearly everyone had a point of view on this, and as my computer was already being projected onto the white board, I started typing them in.

Here is where we began:
* Pregnant with quadruplets
* Dead
* Abducted by aliens
* My multiple personalities are misbehaving
* Call in rich
* I have a headache
* I’m washing my hair
* Out of the country
* Out of my medication
* The (WebEx) meeting has been canceled
* Today has been canceled (lack of demand)
* Trapped under something heavy (alternately, a bookcase fell on me)

The fad became an agenda item, and at the start of each meeting we could not begin until someone (often enough yours truly) came up with a new entry. Here is what the next several meetings yielded.
* Drowned on the way to the car
* Overheated
* I have a headache scheduled for this time
* Lice
* My aura has been siphoned off
* He’s off his rocker
* Swine flu

I admit to doing a bit of research for some of the topics, at one point even running an online search for "Epstein's Mother." But the truth is that the reasons just seemed to come to me. I don't know which muse would be the patron of sick excuses. Melpomene? Thalia perhaps?

Anyway, other people got in on the act too. One chap came up with these gems, which are noteworthy simply because he said they came from a former colleague who'd actually used them.
* My family was quarantined by the CDC.
* I was on my way to work, got stuck in traffic, and soiled myself.

Even after I rolled off the project the excuses kept coming in. For example, this one is a true story, and is definitely valid material for a sick excuse.

This one from Paul is in the wishful thinking department, and produced these excuses.
* Sorry, I cannot attend because I’m too busy castle-shopping.
* Sorry, I cannot attend because I was just appointed royalty.

What's your sick excuse?