Parisian Phoenix Publishing

I don’t “doom scroll.” I got my first iPhone in 2009 to settle my anxiety. Everything I could need was in my pocket, accessible by a tiny computer known as the iPhone 3GS.

I start my mornings and end my evenings by checking my email, studying dog training videos (as I am on the waiting list for a light mobility service dog), and watching so many stand-up comedians that my Goffin’s cockatoo now accurately mimics my laugh.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Yesterday when I woke, I checked my sleep stats and reviewed my business and personal emails to make a plan for the day. When some of my health issues intersect, I experience orthostatic hypotension, so I can’t just fly out of bed in the morning.

I noticed a short-form video on social media by a man who identifies as on the Autism spectrum explaining the concept of literal thinking using the “classic chicken joke” as an example.

“Why did the chicken cross the road?”

… “To get to the other side.”

He used this joke to explain how the Autistic mind works, that people on the spectrum visualize a chicken crossing the road.

And I thought, “Well, I envision a chicken crossing the road. What else would one possibly imagine?”

He then continued to explain that the joke is funny because the chicken no longer wanted to live.

This made no sense to me.

And as I listened to a metaphorical clock tick, I realized that he meant that the chicken was suicidal.

When my neurodivergent daughter— a psychology student at Lafayette College— woke up, we discussed this. Was the joke indeed referring to “the other side” as death?

We called her father and asked him.

“Well, that might be one interpretation,” he said.

So, he had never considered a suicidal chicken could be the punchline of the joke. Our daughter wondered if it might be generational. If the joke may have been used to reinforce children’s understanding of death in an age when people used more euphemisms.

We called her grandmother. “Chickens are stupid,” she said. “The joke makes no sense, because if you know chickens you’d know the only way to get them to cross the street is if there is grain on the other side.”

Did I mention she was raised on a farm?

And thus started a non-scientific but comprehensive poll:
Why is the joke “Why did the Chicken Cross the Road” funny?

My daughter’s romantic partner (also neurodivergent) had the literal answer. My art director also. And my friend Pam also never understood the joke and had a literal interpretation. And I asked pretty much everyone with whom I came in contact.

My traveling companion M (who had an adult diagnosis of Asperger’s before that was no longer a thing) wondered, similar to my daughter’s father, if that could be the meaning, but seemed more curious about how much time and thought I had used on this conundrum.

And only one person, about the same age as my daughter, had ever heard the suicidal chicken theory.

So, anyway… IF I have a point to this whole story, here are some options:

1. Anything can be an inspiration, and we all learn everyday.
2. As humans, we like to assign meaning to things. Those meanings might not be what the creator intended.
3. Individual interpretations of a work have as much power as what the creator intended.