Digital Wanderer

This is an old chestnut, of course, but very funny (to me)

An acquaintance of mine really disliked the fairy tale "Ryaba the
Hen." He could not understand it. The characters’ actions seemed
like wild antics to him. His reasoning went something like this.
"Once there lived an old man and an old woman. They had Ryaba the Hen" -- that is
normal: old men and old women really do exist, and they
usually keep some kind of livestock. "The hen laid an egg --
not an ordinary egg, but a golden one" -- well, let us suppose so. We will accept this
as an assumption... But then... Then the characters begin acting
with absolutely no motivation. Judge for yourselves: "The old man tried and tried
to break it, but could not." Why, one wonders, did he try to break the egg after
realizing that it was golden? Golden eggs do not break -- that is obvious to everyone.
"The old woman tried and tried, but could not break it" -- what a foolish old woman! As if it were not enough
that the egg was golden, even the old man’s sad example failed to
teach her anything... Moving on: "A mouse ran past, flicked its tail --
the egg fell and broke." How, one wonders, did it break
when golden eggs (see above) cannot be broken? Fine, we will accept this as
a second assumption. But what happens next? Next -- "The old man weeps." What
for? Just a minute before the mouse broke the egg, he himself
had been trying to achieve the very same result! The old man turns out to be
very inconsistent... Or is this old man so petty that it
matters to him exactly who broke the egg? It is unclear. "The old woman weeps" --
once again, a foolish old woman! Mechanically repeating everything the
old man does. "And the hen clucks: "Do not cry, old man..." -- Stop! If
Ryaba the Hen can talk, then why did she silently
watch the old man and old woman’s senseless actions earlier, why did she not
object or explain the situation? A suspicious chicken...
So, she says: "Do not cry, old man, do not cry, old woman, I will lay
another egg for you -- not a golden one, but an ordinary one!" Some consolation:
it was the golden one they were crying over!.. And anyway -- if the egg had been
ordinary from the start, no tragedy would have occurred: the old man
would have successfully broken it on his first attempt without outside
help. Even the old woman could have broken it. But that is where the fairy tale ends.
What kind of fairy tale is that? Now let us imagine this: "Once there lived
an old man and an old woman. They had Ryaba the Hen. The hen laid an egg --
not an ordinary egg, but a golden one. The old man rejoiced. The
old woman rejoiced. They took the egg and carried it to the market. And there, in exchange for that golden
egg, they were given ten thousand ordinary ones. They ate a hundred eggs, and
the rest went rotten."