The answer to the above: To get away from Bolt.

It’s the newest twist on a riddle which first made its appearance in a New York magazine, mid 19th century. It now exists in most languages and, at the time of writing, a Google search yielded close to 22 million results.

One website answered from the perspective of the most renowned physicists. Thus, from Albert Einstein: “The chicken did not cross the road. The road passed beneath the chicken,” and from Isaac Newton: “Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest. Chickens in motion tend to cross roads.”

Another answered from the perspective of classic philosophers. From Plato, the chicken crossed the road “for the greater good”. From Karl Marx, “it was a historical inevitability,” and from Jean-Paul Sartre, “in order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.”

I was hustling home from Best Buy, around 2:30, November 11. As usual, there was excitement in the homeland. I followed as best as I could, but something was missing because the audio on my computer stopped working. I could not hear the talk shows and what ordinary Jamaicans were saying about the Jamaica Labour Party leadership race and the day-old outcome.

I was due a new computer anyway. I did my research, decided on what I wanted, and was in and out of the store in about 20 minutes.

I was leaving the parking lot — my radio tuned to WTOP, another of my predictable media habits — when the announcer posed a trivia question. The station carries only news, weather and traffic “on the eights and when it breaks,” so this was a little outside the norm.

“Did you know that, during 10 days in London for the Olympics, Usain Bolt ate 1,000 chicken nuggets? “I did the math and that is a whopping 47,000 calories!” he said.

“So why did the chicken cross the road?” he laughed. “To get away from Usain Bolt!”

I laughed, too, but it was more than a joke for me. It was a moment to marvel at Usain’s place in a globalised world.

For some people, there is tremendous entertainment value in watching our athletes win on the world stage. Their exploits feed our competitive nature and fierce nationalism, and provide vicarious enjoyment of the wealth and celebrity status that come with them.

For others of us, it is about a recognition of how young people, born in humble circumstances, apply the best of themselves to dig their way out of the hopelessness of rural poverty or the indignity of life in urban ghettos.

Have you ever wondered, for example, what might have been Usain’s lot in life without athletics? We will never know, but a prototype exists in rural communities across Jamaica. And, what would have been Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce’s fate in Waterhouse?

My cheers for them always come with a few tears. Every time I see our athletes in the starting blocks, getting ready to run their hearts out, the tears appear from nowhere. As someone intimately familiar with the unyielding tentacles of poverty, I know the Herculean effort it takes to rewrite and live a different narrative. I am proud of all who are able to accomplished that through hard work.

The question had me thinking too about globalisation and how Jamaica, with its oversized cultural footprint, as one speaker recently described it, is often the bullseye.

Bob Marley and reggae music, as the universal rallying cry against systemic injustice and oppression, is becoming more pervasive with time, and other icons of Jamaican origin like Colin Powell, Susan Rice, Harry Belafonte, Kamala Harris, Shaggy, and Sean Paul are prominent on the world stage. Add to this, the growing use of patois internationally as a language of creativity and resistance; the hunger for our cuisine and things Jamaican, both tangible and intangible; the “shelling” of the London Olympics and now Usain’s and Shelly-Ann’s crowning as IAAF’s athletes of the year; and Tessanne Chin’s commanding performances on The Voice, and one has to appreciate that we are cool when we are not being murderous and corrupt.

The real Jamaica embodies so much of what this age is about — the “flattening” of key global systems, the rise of formerly oppressed/indigenous people, the quest for equality, authenticity, selfhood and joi de vivre, and the potential for a more organic life — in harmony with a beautiful natural environment.

The default page on my new computer presented thumbnails of a slew of the world’s most beautiful destinations. I clicked on Ocho Rios. The narrative is objective. It presents both sides of paradise, which brings me to some of the other reasons why we have been in the international news recently: Allegations of sloppy drug-testing protocols in our athletics programme and the Wall Street’s Journal article questioning the credentials of Dr Herb Elliott, Chairman of the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission.

There is no perfect society, but I maintain, that this no reason not to strive for one. Furthermore, there is no question that many of our processes can be managed better. In this regard, those who are calling on the Government to better manage the drug-testing programme, and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce’s call for better response to the allegations, in both form and substance, are quite correct.

Elliot’s cringe-worthy response to the article, meanwhile, reveals a lack of understanding and readiness for the scrutiny that comes with the exposure that we love. For, it is most unlikely, that the Ivy League Columbia University and the Université Libre de Bruxelles would both lose his records.

In truth, there is only one response to accusations that someone has falsified his/her credentials: you produce them. The resignation of the entire JADCO board, announced over the weekend, does not nullify this issue. The question remains: Are Elliott’s credential’s real or not? What should be the consequence if they are not?

For our own good, it is helpful to know that Usain is the newest reason why the chicken crossed the road. It is more helpful if we understand that “di higher monkey climb, a di more im expose himself” and that we ready ourselves to deal with these duelling realities.

gvirtue@usa.net