Dichotomy of the Animal Cracker
Animal cracker...cookie or cracker?
A short background on why this question has been boggling my mind.
For lent I decided to give up cookies. A hard and daunting task for myself. One day, I believe it was on a Sunday, I was about to help myself to a box of assorted animals, you may know them as animal crackers. When all of a sudden my friend jumps out of left field and tells me that I cannot indulge in such a thing as the animal cracker, according to her , fell into the realm of cookie. I said no, it a cracker, and so the debate began.
Over the past week I've been conducting research and have a few important facts I think I should share with you before you come to a conclusion.
The first and maybe most heavy weighing fact comes from a book called Webster’s dictionary. If we look up the word "animal cracker" the following definition is given. "a small cookie in the shape of an animal."
Surely then we must conclude on cookie. Ah but that would be to simple and my mind would not be in such disorder right now. As I look up the same term in the dictionary that is included on my power book G4 the following definition is given.
"Animal cracker - noun - a type of sweet cracker made in various animal shapes."
The two dictionaries are contradictory and we must rescind that information for this debate. We cannot rely on written definitions to conclude for us, we must deicide for ourselves.
We can examine the ingredients, but this is just a much even weighed that we cannot really decided based on that.
A cookie is described as a small flat or raised cake. A cracker is described as a product that may be leavened or unleavened, meaning raised or not. Now on the ingredients list we will find the obvious. Flour, sugar, shorting, salt, and interestingly enough we find leavening as component.
Though again we are using a dictionary to tell us what a cookie is and what a cracker is so we cannot faithfully rely on their information as a basis for conclusion.
I have surveyed various friends on this matter and it seems to be an almost even split on which side one goes to with a little more weight on the cookie side.
When I first began this discussion I was leaning towards the cracker side, about half way I was thinking cookie, now trying to conclude I am still just as baffled as I have ever been.
The animal cracker has found its place in this world where its hybrid nature cannot be defined, nor can be placed into a category about what it is. To me it maybe one thing, yet to another it may be something completely different and I am ok with that. There need not be a struggle to place something somewhere in the cosmos for the sake of justification and our own peace of mind. There are questions in life that we may never know the answer too and so we must learn to agree to disagree on what we might think we know. So where does this leave us? Back at square one I suppose. I would very much like to hear from you and your decision on the matter though of course.
To conclude I’d like to share a little poem I have just written on the matter.
Animal crackers
I think they’re really neat
First I eat their little ears
And then I eat their feet
I don’t know what you are
And I may never know
My tummy will do the deciding
Down the hatch you go
-trashcan