Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years with time off for good behavior?
--New York State Senator James Donovan, speaking in support of capital punishment--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To get to the other side.
I've been hearing that for nigh onto seventy decades, and today I discovered I never got it!
I always thought it was one of those "duh" things. Like, "of course to get to the other side of the road, why does anyone cross the road, if you were expecting any different reason for crossing the road you were overthinking it, duh. Gotcha."
Note I always mentally added the "of the road". Which, you will note, is not in the original. Is never in the original. Which sort of indicates to me that everyone else in the world got it. Except me.
It never occurred to me that it was ... a pun? A double entendre?
It never occurred to me that a chicken who attempts to cross a road is suicidal, and that "other" and "side" can be capitalized.
I know I tend to be much too literal, but for almost seventy years of chickens?
Am I alone here? When did you "get it"?
[If you ever tell this joke to small children, for their sakes, please explain it to them. Don't let them live in ignorance.]
.
5 comments:
Oh. I never got it either, then.
I later remembered an uncle once asking me why the chicken crossed the road, and I answered "to get to the other side, of course, but that's not the real question. Why would a chicken want to get to the other side, anyway?" He laughed and said, "It's like the grass is greener thing. He heard that the corn on the other side was heavenly."
That was a hint, and I still didn't get it.
There are many schools of thought on why the chicken crossed the road. Suicide is one. Some think it is just more simple than that.
I enjoyed this: https://www.physics.harvard.edu/academics/undergrad/chickenroad
Z
Sheesh, Z! You ask a physicist "Why", and you get all kinds of observations on who and how and when and what, but you never do find out "Why".
Holy crap, ~~Silk, you have enlightened me today.
When I was a little kid and asked my dad for a tissue (i.e., Kleenex), he's always say, "Tissue! I hardly know you!" and then laugh. Took me a long time to get that one, too, but not as long as the chicken joke.
Thanks for letting me in on the chicken joke secret.
Post a Comment