Teachers, what was the best excuse for being late that turned out to be true?

Storytime. I was the only high schooler on our bus one winter.

The other detail important to this story is that we had the oldest model bus that wasn't in the best mechanical shape.

It had one of those mechanically operated doors, it would shoot out a plume of black smoke every time it started,

and just looked much less fancy than all the other buses the school had.

Anyway, one winter it was so cold that the diesel engine stopped working.

The bus driver said the cold made the diesel in the lines gel up.

I have no idea if that's accurate, but either way the bus wouldn't start.

Fortunately, we were only five miles from the school and all the kids had been picked up

already. So they just radioed another newer bus to loop back around and pick us up. The bus driver

radioed the elementary school but completely forgot to let the high school know. So I show up to

class and the teacher asks why I was late. I said, the cold caused the fuel lines to gel up in the

school bus, repeating exactly what the bus driver told us.

But I was the only high schooler on that bus, so no other students were there to back up my story.

The teacher didn't believe me, and instead of just calling the main office to verify the story,

she mocked me in front of the whole class saying,

It's not possible for fuel to freeze in the cold.

And everyone in the class agreed with her, saying that I was a bad liar and laughed at how dumb my story was.

Ultimately, the office did let her know about the bus after she tried giving me a detention,

but the embarrassment is still there and she never gave me an apology.

I don't really blame a lot of teachers of being skeptical about excuses kids make for being

late in the stuff, but the fact that they didn't even bother to check if there was a situation

...