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.

Kathy said, "My father's a farmer and we have a lot of egg-laying

hens. One time we were taking our eggs to market in a basket on the

front seat of the pickup when we hit a bump in the road and all the

eggs went flying and broke and made a mess" "And what's the moral

of the story?" asked the teacher.

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket!"

"Very good," said the teacher.

"Now, Lucy?"

"Our family are farmers too. But we raise chickens for the meat

market. We had a dozen eggs one time, but when they hatched we

only got ten live chicks. The moral of my story is, "Don't count your

chickens until they're hatched."

"That was a fine story Lucy.

Johnny do you have a story to share?

"Yes, ma'am, my daddy told me this story about my Uncle Bob.

Uncle Bob was a pilot in Vietnam and his plane got hit. He had to

bail out over enemy territory and all he had was a bottle of whiskey,

a machine gun and a machete. He drank the whiskey on the way

down so it wouldn't break and then he landed right in the middle of

100 enemy troops. He killed seventy of them with the machine gun

until he ran out of bullets, then he killed twenty more with the

machete until the blade broke and then he killed the last ten with his

bare hands."

"Good heavens," said the horrified teacher, "what kind of moral did

your daddy tell you from that horrible story?"