LOL, that joke is also told by English boys...as a young man, before becoming a Mister, is formally called a Master...
as in Mr. Smith...or his son Master Smith...
So if the family name was Bates...that kid got it...LOL
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
Dwight D. Eisenhower