Sunday, January 10, 2016

Wardroom Smartassery

So there was this ship's captain. He was a first-gen American, both his parents had been brought over from Scotland as children. He was very much into Scottish culture and he loved to hold forth about Scottish history and whatnot during meals. And since, as the Captain, he was also the Mess President, it's not as though anyone could shut him up.

One time, he was telling everyone about a long-running feud between the Campbell and the MacDonald clans. After some years (so the story went), the local priests prevailed upon the clan leaders to get together, break bread and try to settle the feud. As the story went, they had dinner and then the Campbells rose up and slaughtered the MacDonalds.

There was a moment of silence around the wardroom table, until one young officer said: "And to this day, you can't buy Campbell's soup at McDonald's!"

The silence became a stunned one. Until the Captain chuckled and said that he'd never thought it it that way.