The teacher gave her class an assignment: get their parents to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it. The next day the kids came back and one by one began to tell their stories. Sinead said: 'My da's says eggs are important and we should eat plenty. One time we were taking our eggs home from the supermarket in a basket on the front seat of the car when we hit a big bump in the road and all the eggs went flying and broke on the dashboard and made a right mess.' 'What's the moral of the story?' asked the teacher. 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket!' 'Very good,' said the teacher. Next little Fionnula raised her hand and said: 'Our family have a farm. We raise chickens for the meat factory. We had a dozen eggs one time, but when they hatched we only got ten live chicks, and the moral to this story is don't count your chickens before they're hatched.' 'That was a fine story, Fionnula. Shane, do you have a story to share?' 'Yes, Miss. My Da told me this story about my Auntie Karen. Auntie Karen went to live in the States in the 1980s when she couldn't get a job. Later she was a flight engineer in Desert Storm and her plane got hit. She had to bale out over enemy territory and all she had was a bottle of Irish Whiskey, a machine gun and a machete. She drank the whiskey on the way down so it wouldn't break and then she landed right in the middle of 100 enemy troops. She killed seventy of them with the machine gun until she ran out of bullets. Then she killed twenty more with the machete till the blade broke. And then she killed the last ten with her bare hands.'
'Good heavens,' said the horrified teacher, 'what kind of moral did your Dad tell you from that horrible story?'
'Don't mess with Auntie Karen when she's been drinking.
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