My Birthday Possum

Saturday was my birthday, and my mom hit a home run with her gift to me. Since I was a little kid, she was always good at picking out stuffed animals for me. Ones with character and personality. Ones that were cool and could become real friends to an imaginative kid such as myself.




So Mom gave me a stuffed animal on my birthday—in honor of this blog, it’s a little opossum. She saw it at the gift shop at Cracker Barrel, which, as of September 11, is the exclusive seller of the brand-new Ganz Webkinz Opossum.

The pink nose, hands, and tail are super plush, and the body fur is a respectable representation of an opossum’s frosty gray coat. The tail is curled and you can hang the possum by it. It’s a fairly realistic stuffed animal.




Like others in the Webkinz line, the opossum “comes to life” online at the company’s kid-safe Web site, where children can log on and play with their critter in a virtual world.

You can buy them from Cracker Barrel online; they’re $13.99.




Honestly, it’s been a long time since I’ve eaten at a Cracker Barrel. I quit eating there in the early 1990s when the company blatantly implemented patently discriminatory policies toward its lesbian and gay employees. The company reversed the decision in 2002 and added “sexual orientation” to its nondiscrimination policy, but I guess at this point, for me, it’s become a habit not to go there.

I really do like their “country vegetable plate,” where you can make a meal out of your choice of four of their side items. I’m partial to the turnip greens (I think Cracker Barrel is the only national restaurant chain to regularly offer cooked greens); the fried okra is also something you can’t get at other chains. There’s also pinto beans, fried apples, “dumplins,” mac and cheese, and more. I mean, for a chain restaurant, Cracker Barrel isn’t too bad; it’s one of the few chains where you can get down-home country food, southern-style cooking.

Though I always, always urge you to try out the locally owned and operated places.

And I wonder if they planned it this way, but at the same time that they’re offering this Webkinz opossum, they’re also the exclusive seller of George Jones’s new CD, A Collection of My Best Recollection, a “best of” compilation that includes two previously unreleased songs. And George Jones, you know, is known as “the possum.” . . . Coincidence?

(. . . Possums! People are going to think they’re my favorite animal or something. But our kitties know better.)