Dear Ed,
I have a big problem. I was assigned to write an essay in Mr. Austin’s class. I pulled two all-nighters trying to finish it. The morning that it’s due, I print it out of my printer, but while I’m distracted, my big beautiful bulldog Bobby decides to jump up and start chewing the paper up while I’m getting ready for school. I can’t think of anything else to do other than just take the chewed up paper to school and try to explain to Mr. Austin. How do I rectify this situation?
From, Bobby’s Owner
Dear Bobby’s Owner,
Your dog seems like a trouble maker. But I see the issue here. One thing I’ll tell you is that procrastinating to do essays is a bad thing. While I applaud you for challenging yourself on taking a difficult class, you need to prepare yourself for the essay due date because it can hit you like a brick if you are not ready. Perhaps if you had spaced your essay writing out over a week or so, you would not have been in this situation.
But I know you know your procrastinating habits are bad. How do we explain this to Mr. A? Well first off, tell the truth. Tell Mr. Austin that your mischievous little boy, Bobby, consumed a big chunk out of your paper about Macbeth. While you may think he will never believe this, you are probably right. Unfortunately you did not take a video of Bobby breaking his fast on your thesis, so you have no eye witness account. But you do have DNA evidence. Bobby’s wet slobbery is all over the paper so all you need to do is go to Mrs. Alperin’s room before school and do a DNA test to prove ol’ Bobby took a bite out of your hard earned pages. If you can prove that it was dog saliva on the paper, that should be good enough. But Mr. Austin is smart. This empirical evidence may not suffice. Look no further than the bite marks found on the pages. How could one replicate those? Look on the internet and find pictures of different animal’s bite marks and print them out to show Mr. A.
Now you may be wondering, owner of Bobby, if all this is necessary. Well of course it is! Without this evidence, Mr. Austin will think that you ruined your own paper in order to get an extension on it. This of course is not true. You worked hard for this paper. You would not lie about an accident to get an extension right? Of course not. You want an extension on the paper. So you will make sure your argument is air-tight. Because you need this extension in order to piece together what you remember writing to turn in what you were going to turn in.
Oh wait. I am so silly. I forgot you wrote this on a computer and not by hand. Then the answer is simple my friend. Just print out a new paper! It is saved on some Google servers in Oregon so you should have no trouble asking the office to help you print out your paper. But next time you write a paper for Mr. Austin, I would keep ol’ Bobby away from the printer. He may go bananas again.
Sincerely, Ed