Good coffee and friends seem to bring out unique conversations, regardless of the age or sex of the conversation participants. No matter the time of day, words among friends flow freely - sometimes serious, at times silly and frivolous and yet, at other times trivial yet side-splitting. Such was an impromptu conversation over coffee yesterday afternoon. The coffee-maker - our self-proclaimed coffee snob, connoisseur, and barista - is a highly educated gentleman with a keen intellect and wicked sense of humor. His infectious laugh inspires laughter from those around him and, you can be certain, there will never be a dull moment.
As most lively conversations go, the path of dialogue was unpredictable - the kind of conversation where one comment leads to another and another and another until the topic at hand is at a 180 degree from whence it began. Somewhere in the repartee, the comment turned to my childhood, where Capt. SO shared that my family routinely ate roadkill. (Yes, it is true. My dad worked for both the state and county road commissions and if the carcass was warm, he would bring it home and my mother would cook it for dinner.) I was regaling the group with all the different animal meat I had eaten as a kid and when I said the word, "opossum", our barista immediately said, "You mean 'possum'". I replied, "No, opossum". The I-Pad immediately came out of hiding and "we" looked up opossum versus possum. After all, one is never too old to learn.
As it turns out, this American marsupial is a transient creature - one that answers to many names. Didelphis virginiana, order Didelphimorphia, family Didelphidae , or Virginian opossum. It is an omnivore that also answers to the name "possum" for short or "O'possum" if the mammal hailed from Ireland. If you have been wounded by snipers and you feign death, then it can be said that you are "playing possum". And I have now shared the knowledge that we all gained yesterday.
This blog topic was born from a coffee conversation. No alcohol was involved, although I recognize that might be a tad bit hard to believe. I kid you not.
Ancora impossumaro
