The Chicken and the Egg
by Joe Thompsoon

One day a chicken was disturbed by a voice coming from the egg upon which it was sitting. “Get off of me, old woman!” said the egg.
The chicken was stunned and moved a little to the side to look at the egg. “I beg your pardon,” she said politely, “Were you talking to me?”
“Yeah,” said the egg, “I can’t breath. I feel like I’m being suffocated; I can’t do anything, because your big bottom is always sitting on me.”
The chicken clucked quietly and nervously to herself for a few moments and then she said “I thought I was doing the right thing. I was only trying to hatch you, so you could grow up and be chicken or a rooster. Then you could run around in the yard if you wanted to.”
“I don’t want to wait. I want to live now. I don’t ever want to be a chicken. I’ll be an egg forever. Let me go.”

The chicken didn’t know what to do. She thought she ought to sit on the egg until it hatched. But she wanted the egg to be happy, and if it wanted to go free, then perhaps that is what she would have to do.
“Are you sure you know what you are doing?” she asked.
“Yeah, yeah, I know what I’m doing. It’s not like I was born yesterday, you know.”
So the chicken got off of the egg and carefully rolled it down the board that led up to her nest. The egg rolled and rolled out of the barn. “Hooray, I’m free! Thanks mom, you are the greatest mother of all!” called the egg.

And everyone watched to see the egg that was making so much noise. But then the egg realized that it couldn’t stop rolling and it was going faster and faster toward the stone wall of the farm house. “Help me,” it called out. But it was too late. It smashed into the wall and its shell broke into thousands of little pieces. It’s yolk and insides spread all over the ground. It was so broken up that not even all the kings horses and all the kings men could put it together again. And inside the barn the chicken cried and cried that it had ever let the egg go before it was hatched.



The moral to this story is: (pick one)

A: Giving a child what it wants is not the same as giving it what it needs.
B: Too many smart cracks can cause a bad break.
C: If you give an egg a guitar, it will probably sing yolk songs.

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