A teacher gave her fifth-grade class an assignment:
“Ask your parents to tell you a story with a moral at the end.”
The next day, the children came to class and began sharing their stories.
One little girl started:
“My father is a farmer, and we have lots of egg-laying hens. One day, we were taking eggs to the market in a basket on the front seat of the pickup. We hit a big bump, and all the eggs went flying and broke.”
The teacher asked, “What’s the moral of the story?”
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
“Very good!” said the teacher.
Another little girl raised her hand.
“My family are farmers too, but we raise chickens for the meat market. One time, we had twelve eggs, but when they hatched, we only got ten live chicks.”
“The moral is, ‘Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.’”
“That’s a fine story,” said the teacher.
Then a little boy at the back of the class began waving his hand wildly.
“Yes, do you have a story to share?” asked the teacher.
“Yes, ma’am. My daddy told me this story about my Aunt Maureen.”
The boy continued:
“Aunt Maureen was a flight engineer during Desert Storm. Her plane got hit, and she had to bail out over enemy territory. All she had was a bottle of whiskey, a machine gun, and a machete.
“She drank the whiskey on the way down so it wouldn’t break. Then she landed right in the middle of 100 enemy soldiers.
“She killed seventy of them with the machine gun until she ran out of ammunition. Then she killed twenty more with the machete until the blade broke. Finally, she killed the last ten with her bare hands.”
The teacher looked horrified.
“My goodness! What kind of moral did your father get from that terrible story?”
The little boy replied,
“Stay the hell away from Aunt Maureen when she’s been drinking!”