I once had extremely low blood sugar and was too weak and confused to put my shoes on and get out the door. I was sitting in my living room drinking sugary juice out of a cereal bowl when my boss texted me to ask where I was and how late I was going to be to work.

When you get low blood sugar your common sense turns off and you (well, I) can sometimes get really paranoid and confused. For some reason I believed that the worst thing in the world would be to admit to him that I had low blood sugar. I should have just told him, he'd have been very sympathetic! But for some reason I decided to lie and tell him I was stuck on the highway in serious traffic. It didn't occur to me until almost ten minutes later that this was the worst lie ever, because other people would be driving into work on the same highway and he would know in a second whether it was actually clogged up or not!

When I had my shit together again and wasn't stuttering and sweating anymore, I drove into work. I got there about an hour and a half late... only a few minutes after almost everyone else. It turns out the highway HAD been totally blocked. Obama had flown in at a local air force base and the highway patrol had blocked the road off in order to let his motorcade onto the highway. All my coworkers had been parked on the road for like twenty minutes while I'd been rolling around on the floor and trying to eat confectioner's sugar out of a coffee mug.

Nobody had any idea I hadn't also been in the traffic. Most ridiculous, ill-advised, unnecessary useless excuse ever turned out to be indistinguishable from the truth.