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| ADMIT |
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TARDY / ABSENCE SLIP No. 000001 STUDENT: ______________ (never) TIME IN: 7:52 a.m. REASON: See below. All of it. EXCUSED: X UNEXCUSED: ___ ADMITTED BY: C. E. |
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Good morning, and sign in at the counter, please. My name is Carol Enochs. In August of 1973 I took a job as the attendance secretary at a public high school here in Knoxville, Tennessee, "just until we get the station wagon paid off." The station wagon was paid off in 1976, my children are now 38 and 35, and I am still at the front counter. This is my twenty-seventh fall, and my last. Next June, when the seniors walk across the stage, I will be walking out right behind them. Every school morning of those twenty-six years, somebody has handed me a note. Fever. Dentist. Funeral. Car trouble. I once tried to figure how many I have read, and when I got past a hundred thousand I stopped figuring. Nearly all of them say just what they ought to. But every year a few of them are something else, and those I have kept. Not the notes themselves, which belong to the school and go in the file. I mean I went home at night and copied the good part onto an index card, and I have a shoebox full of index cards now. I like teenagers. I have liked every class since 1973, even the ones that gave me gray hair, and especially the ones who came in late with their heads down. And I like their mothers, who are doing the best they can at seven-fifteen in the morning with one shoe still missing. Nobody below is being laughed at. These are the notes that made my mornings.
The Believability Scale, in tardy slips: [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] I would believe it in church. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] I believe it happened. Maybe not on that particular morning. [ADMIT] I admitted him anyway. Weather 1974. A mother wrote that her son had missed Tuesday because "the fog in our hollow was so thick he walked out to the bus stop and could not find his way back to the house, and the bus could not find him either, so he stood there till it lifted at ten." I asked him about it. He said he could hear his mother calling him the whole time and could not for the life of him tell which direction she was in. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1985. The cold snap in January. A father's note: "Please excuse my daughter for Monday. The car doors were frozen shut, and so was the back door, and so, in a manner of speaking, was I." [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1993. After the big blizzard in March, school was closed for days, and nobody needed a note for any of it. I got one anyway. A grandmother wrote out two full pages, front and back, of everything the family had done each day they were snowed in, so that I would "have it for the record." Mostly they played Rook. My index card for that one says only "Rook." [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1998. A boy came in an hour late during a spring downpour, soaked to the knees, and handed me a note in his mother's handwriting that said, in its entirety, "Puddle." I have never in my life needed less explanation. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] Animals 1979. "Please excuse him for being late. The cows were out." In 1979 there were still working farms inside our district, so I gave him his slip. The next week he was late again, and the note said, "The cows were out again." The week after that it just said, "Cows." Those cows got out every Thursday for most of a semester. Finally I asked him whether the cows knew what day it was. He said, "Mrs. Enochs, those cows know everything." [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1988. The family parakeet got out of its cage and went to sit on top of the living room curtain rod, and the student had to stay home "to keep the cat in the other room until the bird comes down of its own free will." It came down after lunch. The bird was fine. The cat, said the note, was "very disappointed in all of us." [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1991. A box turtle was crossing their road, and the girl's mother would not drive around it and would not let anybody pick it up, "because it knows where it is going." They sat in the car and waited. It did know where it was going. It just was not in any hurry to get there. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1996. A hummingbird flew into the family's garage. Her father would not raise the big door for fear the noise would scare it up into the rafters, and he would not let her go out the front because the front door sticks and he was "not about to deal with that today too." She came in at 10:20 with the hummingbird's whole story, which was longer than the note. The bird found its own way out at ten. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] Cars 1974. My very first winter at the counter was the winter of the gas lines. "Please excuse my son. We were in line at the station from six o'clock, and when we got to the front they had run out." The mother came in with him, and she looked like she had been in that line since about 1970. I gave him his slip and gave her a cup of the office coffee, which in those days was its own kind of punishment. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1983. "The car would only go in reverse." Her father drove her backwards a quarter of a mile down their road to the neighbors' to borrow their car. I would have believed it on its own, but the neighbor telephoned me himself to vouch for it, because he had been laughing all morning and wanted to share. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1992. Every door on the family station wagon frozen shut. The boy got in through the tailgate and climbed over two rows of seats to unlock the front from the inside, at which point the tailgate froze shut behind him. His mother's note ended, "He is fine. The car and I are no longer speaking." [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1999. Just this April. "Please excuse my daughter's tardy. She drove herself for the first time, and she parked, and then she re-parked, and then she re-parked." Seventeen minutes in the student lot. I watched part of it from the office window. It was a beautiful job at the end. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] Relatives 1976. "Please excuse him from first period. His grandmother came in on the bus last night and nobody can find her hearing aid." A second note came the next morning. It said, "Sugar bowl." [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1987. A junior was kept home to help his great-uncle move a piano. "He is ninety-one," his mother wrote, "and will not be told no." I have thought about that line for twelve years. I would like it on my tombstone. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1990. "Please excuse my twins for Friday. Their aunt is visiting from Ohio, and she has brought her own pillow, her own coffee and her own opinions, and I needed the backup." Every mother in America would give that one five slips, and so did I. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1997. A grandmother who was raising her grandson wrote that he was late because she had taken a notion to make biscuits from scratch at six in the morning, "and you cannot rush a biscuit and you cannot walk off and leave one either." He handed me the note and a biscuit wrapped in a paper napkin. It was still warm. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] plus a biscuit Plumbing 1982. "He could not come to school because the hot water heater went out, and he will not take a cold shower, and I will not send him to school without one. I am sure you understand." I did. I had raised a teenage boy of my own. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1985. That January cold snap again. For one week half my notes were about pipes, and my favorite went like this: "Please excuse her absence. The kitchen pipe burst Sunday night, and she is the only person in this house who knows where the shut-off is. We are working on that." [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1994. A father: "The toilet ran all night. I got up four times. She got up three times. The dog got up twice. Nobody in this house is fit for society today. Please excuse." [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1997. "The county had our water off all morning to fix the main, and he would not come in without a shower, because he has a girlfriend now." I believed every word. I had seen the girlfriend. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] The Unexplainable 1977. "Please excuse her for yesterday. She was not herself." I have wondered for twenty-two years who she was instead. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1984. "He was absent Friday for reasons we have discussed as a family." It is the only note in twenty-six years that I wanted to call home about just to hear the rest of it. I did not call. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1989. A note written on the back of a grocery list. The front said "sick." The back said "milk, bread, eggs, new mop, patience." I hope she found the patience. I happened to know where the mops were on sale, and I told him to tell her. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] 1995. "Please excuse him for Tuesday. Tuesday was not his fault." [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] Some Tuesdays are nobody's fault. 1999. Just this month. "Please excuse my son's tardy. The clock was right, but the morning was wrong." I could not have put it better if I had tried for twenty-six years, and I suppose I have. Some mornings are just wrong. [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] [ADMIT] Notes I'm Fairly Sure You Wrote Yourself Every year I get a few, and I would be telling a fib if I said otherwise. Here is how I can usually tell:
Nine times out of ten the truth comes right out across the counter before I've dialed, and then we can talk about what really happened, which is usually something a good deal harder than skipping school: a test they were scared of, trouble at home, a ride that didn't come, a little brother who had to be walked somewhere. The tardy goes in the book, because the rules are the rules. But nobody ever got a lecture from me, and everybody got a peppermint. The tenth time, the mother really did write it, two spellings and all, and I owe somebody an apology, and I give it. You are visitor number      since my nephew put this page up in March. Please sign in. No note required. Carol Enochs · [email protected] Last updated Tuesday, September 21, 1999 |