I have a cartoon book that was created several years ago, entitled “Dear Teacher”, bought for me when I had a class of primary children myself.
It was a humorous compilation of supposedly real written excuses supplied by parents for their child’s absence or non-completion of homework etc, and it was hilariously illustrated to highlight the often semi-literate, badly spelt wording of each particular excuse.
“Dear Teacher, I am sorry that Johnny wasn’t at school yesterday as he had tripped over a loose broad on the floor of his room”.
You can imagine the accompanying picture, where a rather blowsy, blonde, intoxicated young woman is just languidly taking up space on the floorboards of a child’s room; no questions asked.
Recently, amid the current Covid situation here and the ongoing pleas for more people to get vaccinated, a new group of excuses has begun to surface, and I can only imagine the creation of a similar book somewhere down the line.
Irrespective of individual opinions from BFD readers about the vaccine itself, or the rights or wrongs of pushing the vaccination message on a population, here are just a couple of comments that raise the eyebrows somewhat.
Take a caller to a talkback station last week – the father of a girl who has a multitude of piercings and is covered in tattoos. When he asked her why she didn’t want to get the vaccine, her straight-faced reply was that “she was scared of needles”. He was clearly happy to highlight this anomaly!
Another story is from a Christchurch suburb which apparently has the lowest rate of vaccination in the country. One 50-ish woman sitting on her doorstep, looking as though she has had a hard life, and with beer and cigarette in hand, is frightened of what she might be putting into her body if she has the vaccine, saying, “I’m scared it’s going to kill me. I just don’t trust it.”
Humans are strange beings indeed.