The art and science of excuses

Late for work, the 25-minute commute gave me plenty of time to make up an excuse. As we all know, there is both an art and a science to excuses. Schooled in both, I drove pondering the various styles of excuses open to my disposal.

There are humorous, self-deprecating, half-lies, complete fabrications, diversionary, sympathy-generating and no-excuse excuses. Of course the easiest solution would be to live a life where rationalizations were not needed. However, the world is imperfect, and we all want to be liked, respected and not thought of as being a flake. So excuses hold a place in our common lexicon.

There are people who hide behind humorous excuses. “I would have been here earlier, but my captors from Andromeda 5 were slow with my body probe. They only use 220 volt with funny plugs like you see in Europe. I can tell you they came in peace. Now where were we?”

Self-deprecating excuses suffocate the listeners with an avalanche of “I am so sorry. This is horrible. I am awful. I am bad and worthless. I don’t deserve to live.” After a few minutes, we begin to agree with them. The apologies are so long and drawn out, not only were they 10 minutes late but the moaning occupies another five minutes or more.

The half-lies are clearly the most common and are reasonably effective. It’s often traffic. “The traffic was horrible. I have never seen it so bad. There must have been an accident. I didn’t see it, but you know how that goes. I’m just hoping no one died.” Cars were on the street; that part was true. Gridlock: That part may not be true.

What is missing from the story is that the lateness was from some silly dilly-dally delay. There is a subconscious insecurity that causes people to procrastinate. It is like a child being afraid to come home after breaking curfew. They are even later to avoid their dread of being late in the first place. Fear promotes postponement.

Out and out lying is unfortunately not rare. The problem here is one has to have a great memory to keep the deceptions going. It suggests an inspired, active mind but an uninspired, inactive conscience.

Diversionary tactics are like faking left and then going long. They worked great at Normandy. Likewise, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, “Stormin Norman,” schooled Saddam Hussein in Kuwait. In alibis, you have people look left and you go right. “Aren’t you glad the world didn’t end yesterday?”