Why is it that we just love to entertain ourselves listening and watching young children.  I suppose it’s their innocence and honesty so effortlessly projected.  The recent rash of TV commercials containing one adult and four kids in a discussion group setting has captured everyone’s hearts.  The honest answers coupled with their totally innocent facial expressions is priceless.

I understand the desire of businesses to use these kids for commercial purposes.  If there were four or five adults sitting around talking most of us would click the remote and move on to things that were more interesting and believable.  Adults are never perceived as being honest, especially those involved in the making of television commercials.

Over the years most commercials involving young kids and adults have not so subtly treated the adults like idiots.  The kids are then shown as the smart and sensible members of the family.  This kind of posturing plays right into the younger demographics but I always thought it was a little insulting to us adults.  I readily admit that many adults are idiots but I always held out hope that it was just a small percentage.

This morning lying in bed in a semi-relaxed state I was quietly surfing the net when I came upon a number of sites listing actual letters from parents who were excusing their children from school.  These samples reflect the actual wording and mis-spellings that those parents used.  I’m sure the teachers who received these notes were as shocked as I was.  It’s hard to understand how a reasonably intelligent parent would want their notes to the school to read this way.  Enjoy them and then just slowly shake your head with your total lack of understanding as I did.

• Please excuse Pedro from being absent yesterday. He had (diahre) (dyrea) (direathe) the shits. [words in ( )’S were crossed out.]
• Sally won’t be in school a week from Friday. We have to attend her funeral.
• Please excuse little Jimmy for not being in school yesterday. His father is gone and I could not get him ready because I was in bed with the doctor.
• My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the Marines.
• Maryann was absent December 11-16, because she had a fever, sore throat, headache and upset stomach. Her sister was also sick, fever and sore throat, her brother had a low grade fever and ached all over. I wasn’t the best either, sore throat and fever. There must be something going around, her father even got hot last night.
• Chris will not be in school cus he has an acre in his side.
• Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday.
• My child was absent from school yesterday because he had a sore trout.
• Please excuse my son for being absent yesterday. “He has a cold and could not breed well”.
• Excuse my son. He’s been under the doctor.
• Please excuse my son from being absent yesterday. “He had diarrhea and his boots leak”.
• Please excuse my daughter for being absent yesterday. “She was in bed with very bad gramps”.
• Please excuse my child from school yesterday. “He had a bad stomach egg”.
• Please excuse my child from missing school yesterday. “I thought we had a 3 day weekend”.

I certainly hope that the children of these parents are smarter than the parents seem to be.  Bad grammar, misspellings, and a general lack of concern with making the notes read like they came from a thinking adult.  There are times when talking with youngsters is the most refreshing part of the day.  At least they’re honest and anything humorous they come up with is based on a lack of experience and not a lack of intelligence.