"Please excuse my daughter, Chidinma, from school yesterday as she was suffering from a severe case of malaria and body weakness." The school absence note is a genre of Nigerian literature. It is rarely honest. The child was not sick. The child was traveling to the village. The child overslept because the parents went to a party. But the note must say "malaria" because that is the accepted excuse. It is the sick note that covers all sins. The handwriting is always the parent's. The child who forges it is a criminal mastermind. The teacher who receives it knows it is fiction. But the bureaucracy demands paper. The note is filed. The absence is excused. Everyone pretends. And the creativity! Some parents write novels. "It started on Tuesday evening with a slight fever. By Wednesday morning, she could not lift her head. We took her to the hospital. The doctor said..." The teacher reads this epic and thinks, "This child was at a wedding." The absence note is not documentation; it is diplomacy. It allows the school to maintain rules and the parent to maintain face. What's the most creative excuse your parents ever wrote for you? Or did you forge notes yourself?
