My little classroom of international students was rocking right along. The boys and Noah were working hard, and I was studying several hours every evening to prepare for the next day's lesson. Aside from mothering toddlers, it was the hardest job I'd ever had.
I happened across Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man, the book he published following his bestseller Angela’s Ashes. In an early chapter, he describes some of his teaching methods, one of which was having his students write an excuse note to God.
The next day in class, I announced that we were going to write impromptu essays as practice for the essay section on the SAT. The assignment, I explained, was to pretend they were Adam and Eve and write an excuse note to God explaining why they had eaten the apple.
The boys and Noah each stood and read their essays aloud to the class. Jakub from Poland gave a clever excuse that certainly originated from his childhood. He said, “The apple fell off the tree, and we’re not supposed to waste food.”
Aleks' excuse read, “I had too much vodka the night before and needed something on my stomach.” Like Jakub's, that excuse was probably rooted in a European upbringing, but it made me a little nervous since this was, after all, a Christian school.
But then my Lithuanian boy, Petras, brought down the house. He stood and without batting an eye read, “Eve told me I wouldn’t get any pussy if I didn’t eat that apple.”
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