This Letter to the Editors was submitted by Sarah Fritz, a sophomore at Concordia College.
I discovered the great art of possuming at a young age. I have never been a big fan of confrontation or drama, so I often times just let things go or ignored a certain situation until eventually it became obsolete. Little did I realize that even then in my youth I had a great talent for “possuming.” You see, the possum is a large rat-like marsupial that is known for its greatly successful playing-dead act. Although possums can be vicious, they understand their limits and abilities as fighters (which, like mine, are almost nonexistent). So instead of facing conflict head on, they play dead. It’s genius! Let’s say there is this huge wolverine, and it is pissed. The possum knows it’s no match for wolverine (no one is), so the possum flips onto its side and lies still, presumably dead. The wolverine, content with the fact that it’s scared yet another innocent creature to death, seems satisfied with its work and goes off to continue its reign of terror through the forest. When the possum is certain danger has fled, it gets up and goes on with its possum life. If this strategy works so well for an oversized rat, then it can damn well work for you and me.
I am not saying that when you get into an argument that you should play dead, although I am sure it would end the conversation and that person probably wouldn’t ever talk you again, so if that’s your goal I guess all the more power to you. I am saying that we need to harness the possum’s ancient art of avoidance. The possum can avoid confrontation, and so can you! You have an awkward situation? Just ignore it! It is that easy. So here is a hypothetical situation for you. You happen to be out on a Friday night having a good time…doing homework. You happen to be doing homework with a person of the opposite sex or I guess same sex that you are very attracted to. The… homework has started going to your head so maybe you do something you normally wouldn’t, like kiss their face. The next morning you wake up mind fogged from homework and Pizza Patrol, and you realize that you have a made a huge mistake. You begin to panic, what have you done? What are you going to do? I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to possum. Instead of making it awkward by trying to talk it out or even bring it up, you just forget it happened. Just act normally (I use the term normal very loosely). Eventually everyone (including the person whose face you kissed) forgets about the incident because it hasn’t been brought up, and everyone can move on with their lives. I suppose I should warn you that this tactic is not 100 percent successful, but I have found 60 percent of the time it works. This hit-or-miss success rate may or may not have to do with the fact that possuming is possibly the most immature way to handle any situation but who’s really keeping track? Possuming is the future, so go out my friends and save yourself the drama. Possum that stuff.
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