I Need To Go Iron My Dog / Literature

• In American Psycho, Patrick Bateman tells people that "I have to return some videotapes" several times; when being questioned by a PI about where he was at a particular time, he invents that he was "probably returning videotapes". At other points, he tells people variously that he's buying cocaine, leaving to Pago Pago, or has an important meeting with Cliff Huxtable.
• In And I Darken Kumal wants Radu to marry his sister Nazira. When the pair are together in a garden, Kumal excuses himself by noting he is going to examine an interesting shrub for a while.
• In the Anne of Green Gables stories young Davy is full of malapropisms and unique opinions that could make you smile, but it's his opinions on religion that push Anne over the edge...
  Davy: There'll be plenty of jam in heaven, that's one comfort.
  Anne: Perhaps there will...if we want it. But what makes you think so?
  Davy: Why, it's in the catechism.
  Anne: Oh, no, there is nothing like THAT in the catechism, Davy.
  Davy: But I tell you there is. It was in that question Marilla taught me last Sunday. "Why should we love God?" It says, "Because He makes preserves, and redeems us." Preserves is just a holy way of saying jam.
  Anne: I must get a drink of water.
• Ascendance of a Bookworm: Invoked. After Myne uses her shampoo on the hair of an older friend's wife, the friend very obviously wants to have a "private moment" with his wife and asks Myne if there is any reason she needs to leave immediately.
• In a Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel, Xander once excuses himself from a conversation like so:
  Xander: I have to go wash my... [Xander remembers that he didn't own a car] ...house.
• In Constance Verity Destroys the Universe, Connie fakes getting a text message from the CIA to get out of an awkward conversation with Tia's mom over Hiro.
• Dirty Bertie: In "Worms", Bertie thinks of many excuses to get out of going to a party he doesn't want to (it's for a girl he finds annoying, he's the only boy invited, and it's pink-themed and he hates pink). While some of the excuses are plausible (e.g. that he has gas and they wouldn't want him around), most fall into this trope. For instance, he claims he has a disease called "party-itis" and then later pretends to have amnesia.
• Discworld:
  • In A Hat Full of Sky, when Roland came to wish Tiffany well on her apprenticeship, Miss Tick immediately declared in a sticky-sweet voice that she saw "a very fine and interesting example of a...a...a big stone over there," so she'll just go and have a look at it. Tiffany felt like pinching her for that. Then when she turns out to have been eavesdropping the whole time, she cheerfully explains that the stone wasn't that interesting.
  • In Wyrd Sisters, Magrat rebuffs someone with "I shall be washing my hair!" "When?" "Whenever!" Its use gets lampshaded when after being repeatedly rebuffed by Magrat, The Fool convinces her to watch the play with him and that there's even a pump available "in case you want to wash your hair". A further lampshade later: To indicate that the Fool hasn't been asking Magrat out lately, Nanny Ogg says to her: "Your hair looks a bit grubby. It looks as though you haven't washed it for a month."
• When Richard shows up without his date in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Reg muses about why she hadn't come, and asks if this was the excuse she gave. He adds that it's only for lack of hair that he has to participate in the school as much as he does. (It turns out that Richard completely forgot that he had invited her.)
• Harry Potter:
  • Averted earlier in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Harry feels uncomfortable and wants to leave the room after Moody shows him a picture of the original Order of the Phoenix, many of whose members had died shortly after the photo was taken. He starts to pretend that he forgot to pack something (the school year started the next day), but Moody turns away before he finishes his sentence.
  • Downplayed later in the book, when Molly Weasley and most of her children (Bill, Fred, George, Ron and Ginny), along with Harry and Hermione, visits Arthur in the hospital, and Molly finds out Arthur was using Muggle stitches to treat his wounds, Bill and Harry (separately) each say how much they could use a cup of tea, and the others all follow, as they know this presses Molly's Berserk Button. While wanting a cup of tea would be a plausible lie, it becomes less plausible when a whole group of people make the same claim.
• In Christopher Moore's The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, Molly, who's trying to get the town constable to go away so she can go save a man-eating sea monster, tells him she has broccoli in the dryer. Since she's the town's resident crazy lady, he doesn't find this odd.
• In Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Tom Bertram (rudely) sits down next to the heroine, Fanny, making it clear he doesn't want to dance. Cue his mother coming over and asking him to play cards with her and his aunt. Tom, unfortunately, must decline because he was just about to dance with Fanny.
• In the first book of MARZENA, near the end, Lauren is on her way to meet Marian, with Helena accompanying her as bodyguard, and then they receive some fishy text message resulting in Lauren making an even fishier excuse to ditch Helena. Justified in that Marian had secretly switched meeting places as to avoid the IJS from spying on them.
• Mindblind: When Nathaniel is ambushed by Jessa and Logan, after his last interaction with them involved drunkenly insulting Jessa and vomiting, he says, "I need to get a drink of water or other reasonable action" and then bolts for the bathroom.
• Wallace in No More Dead Dogs never lies, so when his Abhorrent Admirer begs him to hang out with her on the weekend, he tells her he has to rake the lawn, and thus plans to do so. Unfortunately, she takes this as an invitation, and invites the entire drama team to rake it with him. Though, that may not have been a bad thing, seeing as the job got finished in record time.
• In Please Don't Tell My Parents I Work for a Supervillain, the excuse Claudia uses when asked to meet Magenta is "I'm sorry, I have to feed my shark." This is treated as a real excuse, referencing when she went fishing for sharks a few books ago.
• The protagonist of Please Remove Your Elbow From My Ear, desperate to get off the phone with his crush before he makes a fool of himself, makes a fool of himself when the best excuse he can come up with is that his cat's head is on fire (he doesn't own a cat). Played with in that she's crushing on him too, specifically because he says weird things all the time.
• In Pride and Prejudice, it's done by Mrs. Bennett to Kitty and Elizabeth after her non-verbal hints to Leave the Two Lovebirds Alone fail (due to Lizzy refusing to take the hint and Kitty being too oblivious to understand it).
• The Sharing Knife has a minor Running Gag about the bizarre excuses patrollers use when they're sneaking out of camp to have sex. Variations on "going to scout for squirrels" come up most often.
• Zoe from Social Queue often uses "I have to go to the bathroom" to get out of overwhelming situations.
• The Speed of Dark: When Joe Lee, one of the cured autistics, invites Cameron and Lou to dinner, Cameron says "I have a date," and Lou says, "I have a meeting."
• Star Wars Legends: In the (original) novelization of Revenge of the Sith, after losing his lightsabers in a duel against Obi-Wan, Grievous "seemed to suddenly remember that he had an urgent appointment somewhere else. Anywhere else."
• The Story of Valentine and His Brother: When Richard finally proposes to Mary, she rejects him, even though she's been pining for him for decades. She then escapes the awkward situation by lying that Lady Eskside has called her.
• In the Teddy Ruxpin story "Water Safety with Teddy Ruxpin", Grubby tries to avoid going to Teddy's water safety class by using several excuses:
  • The first time, he says that he has to dust his pencils.
  • The second time, he says he has to water his Grundleberry bush, which Teddy points out he doesn't have, and then changes this to say he has to help fix Gimmick's invention.
• In This Alien Shore, Jamisia tries to avoid human contact on the metroliner. When Justin offers to walk her back to her room, she mumbles, "I need... I have things to do."
• Trueman Bradley: In the first book, Chief Stokowski runs to the bathroom during Trueman's hearing when he's accused of fabricating evidence against Trueman.
• In What to Say Next, Kit's Uncle Jack, who is not actually her uncle but her late father's best friend, drops by her house to talk to her mom about the will, but her mom says "Wow, it's getting late and I actually have a lot of work to do," and flees the room. She's avoiding him because the two had sex. Kit's parents were on the verge of divorce at the time of her father's death.
• In one of the original Winnie the Pooh stories, Piglet absolutely has to go and do... something that only he can do, and that has to be done right now!
• In Wolf Hall, Thomas Cromwell tells Ambassador Chapuys that he blew off a meeting with the French ambassador because he was busy playing bowls with his household. It seems like a joke and an assurance that Chapuys has nothing to worry about until a later scene with the French ambassador himself—and he opens with a snarky comment "not playing bowls today?"
• You Have a Match: When Abby first finds out from her phone that she has a sister she never knew about, she escapes from Leo's house by saying, "I have to - I just realized - I have tutoring."

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