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2023 Reader Question 116

2023 Reader Question 116 published on 16 Comments on 2023 Reader Question 116

Happy Christmas! Have an…angry opossum? Just like tradition dictates.

It’s the last week of December, so it’s your last chance to join the current round PIN CLUB! Join in December and stay on thru February and you’ll get a PHINEAS THE RED pin with an opalescent red mane, and also his best friend RAVI!

16 Comments

Yankee? Never heard one of us Aussies called that before. That’s what WE usually call YOU USians.
Interesting that the angry American opossum is calling us that. A common brushtail possum or a ringtail would absolutely destroy the angry little opossum lady.

To someone from the American South, anyone who isn’t from the South and also speaks English is a Yankee.

I thought that was only for people INSIDE the United States. Calling a Canadian or a Brit or an Aussie a Yankee just cause they speak English just strikes me (a Canadian) as extremely weird. I’ve always been under the impression that a Yankee is ‘any American not from the South’.
Also you’re probably gonna offend A LOT of people by calling them that, or at least annoy them.

I am NOT a Yankee, I’m not even American.

Yankee specifically refers to folks from New England. You wouldn’t call somebody from Ohio a Yankee.

Of course the British call everybody from America ‘yanks’, which is pretty insulting to those of us who AREN’T from New England.

All that said I imagine our opossum lady — being unaware of the nationality of the person asking the question — would assume it was some dumb Yankee who’s never been out of the city and never seen a ‘possum anywhere outside of a zoo.

“you wouldn’t call somebody from Ohio a Yankee” see you’d think that, but I’ve had my Texas in-laws call ME a yankee and I’m from the Ozarks. It really depends on how deep South you are, often anywhere north is full of Yankees.

Although with that logic you wouldn’t think Australia would be yankees, but again: anyone who speaks english who isn’t from the South is also a yankee.

I am confused, and insulted, by you calling me a “Yankie”, you rat-tailed marsupial. But, hey, I can throw that term back in your face, as I’m an Aussie, not from the US, making you easily 10 times the Yankie I am.

Possums are far cuter than you O’Possums, though. “Better” is debatable, and situational, but cuter would usually be objectively agreed upon. Possums are probably usually less dangerous than O’Possums, too.

That said, if I could ask to be protected by a Totem Animal of my birth/home country, I would probably ask for a Wombat Totem to protect me. Mostly because the other options I can think of are likely to have minimal capabilities to protect me, have some fatal flaw (Koala’s sleeping hours) or are too likely to go overboard (the old Boxing Kangaroo myth came from seeing Kangaroos fighting over mates. The sanitized video footage looks a little like they’re bouncing near each other with their heads pulled back while flailing their arms around ineffectually, making people think of inexperienced boxers. They’re actually trying to claw out each other’s eyes, but it still looks a surprisingly like the sport boxing).

Especially don’t correct a southerner ‘Possum especially since we in the States got the “scary one” for once.

Said with the calm confidence of someone who hasn’t locked eyes with a brushtail possum in their lifetime. Bastards play football in my ceiling, I’ll take a yank opossum on any day, but a brushie is one step off a Tasmanian Devil, but with a better ability to climb.

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