Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

I love humor.  I love to view life with humor and find the value of humor in dealing with stressful and painful situations.  It is refreshing and strengthening.  If I can find humor in a situation or event, it reduces the stress and makes it more tolerable.  I have been studying the way humor is expressed in cultures other than my own.  I have written posts on this blog that indicate my disgust with the Secret Service mess created by agents in Columbia, so I think maybe that is too serious right now for me to find humor in it.  

Sometimes people in the most dire situations find humor helps them survive.  When my husband was dying, he had a respirator and could not speak.  He was awake and alert, and he had things he wanted us to do.  He made hand gestures that my daughters and I tried to decipher.  We guessed wrong and he got frustrated, but eventually we got it right.  We laughed and he even smiled as he saw how ridiculous it all was.  The memory makes his passing less painful.

In most jokes the humor rests in the misunderstanding or change in some expected behavior.
For instance a frog called the Psychic Hotline and he was told, "You are going to meet a beautiful young girl who will want to know everything about you."
The frog says, "This is great!  Will I meet her at a party?"
"No," says the psychic.  "Next semester in her biology lab."

Old one-liners provide a twist to get a laugh.  This is a standard from my childhood.
Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?
A. To get to the other side.

Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?
A. To show the armadillo it was possible.
This one is good in Texas or the Southwest.

Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?
A. To get away from Colonel Sanders.
This one goes over great in Fast Food venues and Kentucky.

Q. Why did the chicken cross the road twice?
A. He was a double crosser.
This one is as old as I am.

Q. Why did the chicken cross the playground?
A. To get to the other slide.
In this one the rhyme provides the twist.

Q. Why did the Iraqi chicken cross the road?
A. To take over the other side.
Political humor crosses the road, too.

Q. Why did the chicken cross the beach?
A. To get to the other tide.
Let your imagination run wild.

Q. Why did the dinosaur cross the road?
A. Chickens hadn't evolved yet.
Very scientific chicken.

Q: Why did chicken cross road?

A: I have not seen chicken since I was very young, on my parents' farm. This is before the Cossacks slaughtered them. I can still hear screams of sister as soldiers rape her. But back to question, where did you see chicken? I am very, very hungry.

This is a joke I found on the net that was attributed to Latvia.  Historical events may become a setting for jokes.  Sometimes, as I said before, the joke may reduce the pain of the true situation so that you can at least talk about it.