Be careful with that bread knife!

 Manfred Der Spiegel, the youngest son of the King of the Danish branch of the Vikings, Olaf von Hindenberg, was at heart a pacifist. He didn’t want to go to war, he didn’t like the idea that when he was 18 years old, which he was fast approaching, he would have to put down his crayons and chalkboard and pick up a sword and go and defend his country. First of all, he questioned why he had to defend his country when no one was attacking it, and all the Vikings did was attack other countries.

“But if we don’t attack them,” he argued his losing case, “then there would be no need for us to do anything. We could just stay home, play marbles, eat ice cream and write stories about our wondrous past.” His parents were appalled by his positions.

All through school and then later in college before he dropped out at the age of 17, Manfred was a good student. He was one of those students who would sit in the front of the class and raise his hand every time his teacher asked a question, whether he knew the answer or not. In order not to embarrass him, his teachers would not call on him just in case he wasn’t able to answer the question. Then they would be hauled in front of his father the vicious, blue eyed, dark matted hair, Olaf von Hindenberg, who legend said breathed fire from his nostrils when he went into battle. That was actually not true, because it only happened once and that was when a Viking horde returned from the barbaric country of Scotland and brought with them a new invention called the cigarette lighter.

On the trip over there when they captured a whole truck full of these lighters, they did not know what they were. Someone suggested the leader smell it in case it was edible and was just a hard chew. The problem was when the leader, whose name has been forgotten to history, took a deep breath and at the same time pressed the button which caused a flame to shoot out and burn the entire inside of his nose. But in order to be feared and for the rest of his men not to think he was a sissy, he laughed and told them it was incredible. So of course, each one of his men tried it with the same results.

However, they brought a bunch of these lighters back with them and presented a gold one to Manfred’s father. “Before you go into battle,” he was told, “take a deep breath and then press this button.”

On the next expedition, this one to the idyllic island of Costa Rica before it blew up, Manfred’s father, Olaf von Hindenberg, who was standing right at the front of his troops held his sword in one hand and the lighter in the other. Then he realised he didn’t have a free hand to press the button, so he asked the general on his left, his left tenant general, to press the button which he did and all there was, was a clicking sound.

“You have to adjust the flow of the stuff,” shouted Gromley Mac Fadden from the back of the troop, which the left tenant general did. There was a shriek as he pressed the button and Manfred’s father’s face was on fire and all his hair was badly singed. But the shriek together with the fire coming out of his nose made the Costa Ricans run for their lives. So, Manfred’s father gained a reputation of being a fire eating monster.

When he returned home, he instructed that all lighters should be sold at a steep discount. “But to who?” he asked.

Manfred’s father had to think for a moment and then replied, “maybe the Chinese.” That was greeted with much alarm.

“They might reverse engineer them,” he was told, “and before we know it, that guy they have over there Confucius, he might attack us.”
Finally it was decided that the safest thing to do was throw them into the sea, because the whales would never be able to figure out how to light them.

Anyway, when Manfred Der Spiegel reached the age of 17.99, his father presented him with his sword which in those days was a big deal. There was a huge ceremony in which Manfred walked into a stadium, Old Trafford before it was moved, with the Viking band playing ‘there goes my baby’ and then when he reached the platform where his father with his still signed hair stood, he withdrew his sword and presented it to his son.

The gasps went up from the packed stadium as Manfred shook his head and said, “no daddy. I don’t want your sword. It has the blood of an Englishmen on it. I want to use my own sword.”
Manfred’s father immediately stood straight up and bellowed, “where is your sword!” Manfred replied by pulling out a bread knife from his pocket with tears in his eyes as he presented it to his father. “Why is there blood on it?” he was asked.

“It’s kinda of sharp, daddy. I wasn’t careful when I pushed it down in my pants.”

That made everyone begin to laugh out loud as they had never laughed before. Manfred’s father stepped down from the platform and took the bread knife from his son, “Son,” he began, “you have to be careful with that bread knife.” Then after wiping the blood off on his pants, he handed it back to Manfred and silenced the crowd by raising his hand which had the immediate effect of quietening the crowd. “My son is correct. We should no longer have the draft. We should be a peace loving nation. We should go out and conquer as many lands as we can and tell them we have come in peace. Ha, ha, ha.”

Manfred slipped away quietly and went back home to finish his orange juice with his little sister, who just said to him as she poured some OJ into his glass and patted him on his back, “I told you it’s better to be a girl.”
Manfred grinned. “I nearly became one not too long ago.”