The Wacky Excuse Letter

This is my contest entry for http://www.coolstuff4writers.com/Contest/Contest.html's monthly challenge. The challenge this month (November) was to write a wacky excuse letter to your boss, partner, teacher or some other person. The word count was set to 250.

My contribution for the contest resulted in the short (130 something words) piece beneath. Hopefully you enjoy it and perhaps it even made you giggle once or twice.

Oh, F.Y.I.: a Xenomorph is the species of alien in the 'Alien'-series.
___________


[pre]Dear Teacher:

I am very sorry that I could not hand you the report on the date given, but a xenomorph had apparently walked past my house last night, spitting acid at the tires on my car, making me unable to drive to school. While walking to the bus I was suddenly attacked by my neighbors dog, who, subsequently ate my report as well as chased me down several blocks. I am very sorry about this and I must therefore ask you for an extension on the deadline so I can re-write the report since my computer crashed, deleting its hard drive which I had saved the file on, and when my house burned down, the paper draft perished within the flames as well. I hope you see my dilemma.

Thank you in advance.

Timmy Marshall.[/pre]

It is quite amusing but I think it could have been more imaginative. It starts off as an extension on the whole 'the dog ate my homework' excuse which didn't really interest me and then you very briefly added other details. You still had more than half your words to work with and it might have been more interesting to save the actual destruction of the homework until the end. For example, you could have created a story of chasing after someone who had broken into your house and stolen your homework because you'd accidentally written it on the back of the deed to your house or some top secret document, the contents of which you clearly can't reveal to your teacher.

Anyway, I did find it slightly amusing and I liked the sentence 'I hope you see my dilemma' (should be dilemna?) and I wish you the best of luck in the contest,

Heather xx

I agree with Kitty. I think the dog-ate-my-homework thing is a little overused. You started it out really well and you had me hooked... until the dog thing. I second that you should wait until the end of the letter to state what happened to the letter. It keeps the suspence for the reader.

Nice work and good luck in the contest!

Thank you for your input. Now, after reading it about twenty times, I fully agree with you both. The idea Kitty gave was highly amusing, and I wished I had thought about it a bit more.

The 'dog ate my homework' is a bit over-used, I know... Perhaps I should have gone with my original idea of an alien abduction instead... well, perhaps we will never know.

Thank you for your honest critique. It's the best way to learn, after all. :]