A refreshingly honest preface

As a tie-in with the material we'd been studying, my high school American history teacher once sang Johnny Horton's "The Battle Of New Orleans" while playing it on the ukulele.  Before singing, he told the class, "Now, I'm going to do something I haven't done since my first year of teaching.  (Pause.)  I'm going to starve to death."  He added, while laughing, "No, that's not what I'm going to do."