(Today, on Old Man Stories: Old Man gets a part time job working in a school cafeteria.)

Kid: Yuck, I hate these disgusting lunches they make us eat!

Old Man: Why, you kids these days! Way back in my day, we had no right at all to complain about school lunches! Why, if you complained about a school lunch, that was a paddling, right there! So was raising your hand to ask a question, but-

Kid: Look, I-

OM: -that isn’t really the point here. Now, in my day food scarce so complaining wasn’t exactly an option. Now to afford food, we would have to go out and join the service for a year or three, and when we were done we might be able to afford lunch that day in school.

Kid: That makes absolutely no sense.

Old Man: Oh, and don’t even get me started on military food! I mean, we couldn’t even have a bite, Sarge would say, until we had killed at least 18 of those blasted Nazi German Russian Commie Japs! Luckily, I had been killing them since I first fought in the other war; you know the big one, when I was 5!

Kid: Huh?

Old Man: You be quiet! I was a trained killer and I’ll take you with me if you aren’t quiet! How dare you point at me like that!

Other Person: Sir, he can’t point at you. He’s paralyzed from the neck down. That’s why I have to feed him!

Old Man: I was a trained killer all the same! After all, I did defeat the entire confederate army while wearing their flag and supporting their ideas.

Kid: Wouldn’t that indicate that you were on their side?

Old Man: That’s it, Susan! You’ve disrespected me long enough! This is going to hurt me a lot more than it hurts you. Ow! Ow! Ow!

Kid: I can’t feel that, sir. I’m paralyzed from the neck down. Putting those steaming hot beans on me is useless, and I would suggest you don’t grab those with your hands.

Old Man: Oh, do you think the board of health scares me? They’ve been putting microscopic amounts of arsenic in your food for years just for experimental purposes!

Kid: What could that accomplish?

Old Man: They wanna beef you up for the coming war! After all, back in my day everyone fought in a war, and-

Other Person: Let’s go eat over there.