ARCHIVAL CASE FILE
Subject: “Chicken” Schitt (birth name: Leghorn Schitt)
Archive ID: SCH-0013 Born: 2007
Parents: Dip Schitt and Loda Schitt
Status: Documented; disposition under continued observation
Among the younger generation of Schitts, few have generated as much paperwork as the boy known as Chicken — a nickname that stuck even though his parents named him Leghorn at birth — and none of it his doing.
Family records agree (for the most part) on the following: born Leghorn Schitt in 2007, only son of Dip Schitt and Loda Schitt, grandson of Jack and Noe Schitt, and nephew to Deep Schitt — a relation Aunt Deep acknowledges “with love and at volume, … from a distance,” usually while correcting his posture.
Regarding the name. The birth name Leghorn is a matter of record. The nickname “Chicken,” however, was earned rather than given: born with remarkably long legs, Leghorn acquired the nickname almost immediately, and the family — never a subtle people — did the rest. Why should Chicken be treated any differently than the others? The Archives notes the existence of an actual Leghorn breed of chicken and declines to comment on whether the parents knew.
Regarding the nervous disposition. The disposition is the best-documented fact in the entire file, and the one subject that Chicken would most like removed from it. Witness statements — status: highly questionable, as always — describe a boy who keeps a packed go-bag by his bedroom door “in case of goats”; who counts the exits upon entering any room, including his own; and who once mistook the annual reunion’s ceremonial goat parade for “a situation” and was found twenty minutes later in the church belfry with the hymnals.
His protective mother Loda claims the disposition is “sensitivity, and I’ll thank you not to pathologize it.” His father Dip maintains it is “good sense, given the family.” Aunt Deep maintains that what the boy needs is “a firm handshake and a better tailor.”
Regarding poultry. In recent years the subject has spent considerable time with Ashley Sage Rowan (younger sister of Molly Rowan) on 4-H poultry projects, and his current interests are recorded as pheasants and Japanese quail. The Archives notes the irony of a boy nicknamed Chicken devoting himself to poultry, and further notes that the subject maintains there is no irony.
Archivist’s Note: The Archives holds no position on the chicken coop incident, beyond observing that a family which nicknames a long-legged boy “Chicken” was perhaps always going to have a chicken coop incident. They just don’t bring it up.
— C.O.S.