[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: BritSpeak: Peeling Sprouts? Really ....Sprouts?

[Shaun Hately]

One of the funniest things I ever saw...

I was a newly minted prefect and we had a whole bunch of boys new to 
the school - start of a new school year. Some senior boys were 
distributed around the junior boys tables during meals for the first 
week or so while they were getting used to how things worked.

On Sunday we had a roast dinner. And there was one kid at my table 
who didn't want to eat his brussel sprouts. I decided to exert some 
authority and told him that unless he ate at least one Brussel 
Sprout, he couldn't have desert.

Most condiments were removed on Sundays to stop us smothering our 
roast dinner in tomato sauce (we smothered everything - except 
possibly ice cream - in sauce). The only things besides salt and 
pepper on the table was hot English mustard. And I sat there and 
watched as this kid carefully coated his entire brussel sprout in a 
layer of hot English mustard.

Then he placed the entire sprout - I suppose about the size of a golf 
ball, coated in hot English mustard in his mouth and tried to swallow 
it hole.

The noise he made was... impressive... the sprout didn't go down, it 
just hung around at the back of his throat until I thought he was 
choking. At that point - as he fell down on the floor drumming his 
heels, I tried to take action, but a teacher arrived, pulled him up 
and hit him on the back to dislodge it.

I got into so much trouble. First of all, I really didn't have the 
authority to force him to eat a brussel sprout, but nobody would have 
really worried about that. What got me in trouble was later in the 
infirmary when the Matron wanted to know what had happened - so I 
described to her what he'd done.

The end of the conversation was something like this:

"So you sat there and watched him cover his brussel sprout in a thick 
layer of mustard, knowing what he was going to do... why didn't you 
stop him?"

"I wanted to see what would happen."

Not the best answer, I could have given, I have to say. The adults 
were not very impressed with it.

Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia