The dog ate my homework - honest!

"Ok, so here's what happened.  I swear it's the truth!

We both knew for several months that my grade would depend on a book report being written by a very good friend of mine, someone who I have known and trusted for years.  Someone I had invited to my parties and socialized with, and who I believed was always on my side.  Heck, you knew him too and had approved of him as an honest guy.

Yes, it sounded strange for me to depend on someone else for my homework, especially when I used to do all of my homework myself.  But this time was different because I already knew everything I needed to know about the book -- or at least I thought I did.  No, I never read it, but I was absolutely sure of its author's other books, so I knew what the story line would be.   And since I knew that my friend was on my side, I knew what he'd say about it.

And, because of our past relationship, you never felt it was necessary to ask anyone else about this.  You depended on me - mainly because I had never given you any obvious reason to not believe me.

I told you what the progress was on the report every day, even though my friend never really told me how it was going.  I even kept you informed on some of the exact content that I thought would be in the report.  Heck, I even told you what my friend would be discussing in it!  I was absolutely certain that I knew how the book report would turn out.

Well, this is what happened.  My friend lied to me!  He told me that he was doing a book report on the book we had chosen, but he changed his mind about how he was going to review the book and wrote a completely different book report instead!  I had no idea that he had changed his mind! I thought he was my friend!  I thought I could depend on him!

Don't get mad at me!  I wasn't responsible for this letdown!  It was that asshole who I thought was my friend.  In fact, when the book report was summarized, the guy who gave the summary completely betrayed me!

What a jerk!  I hate him!  It's his fault that I was wrong!  It's his fault that the review came out differently than I planned!  I thought I could trust him!

I got an F!  Blame him, not me!  I should still get an A because I knew what the report should have said!  In fact, my friend is wrong!  I'm sure I can dig into his report and find the truth!"


"Well, kid, that's what comes from getting participation trophies for attendance rather than learning how to actually play the game.  Don't blame your friend for your own failure.  He's the one who did the work.  Maybe he really does understand the book better than you do.

By the way, that kid you hate?  The one you always make fun of?  The one on the other side of town?  The other one who depended on your friend's book report?  He didn't make any assumptions about the book, its author, or its content.  He didn't guess about the content of the report, but he did do a lot of his own background research... and got an A."