The other day, my krazy koworker (every store has at least one, but this guy is world klass krazy) showed up for work late.

“I’m late,” he said.

I agreed, noting privately to myself that he is, in fact, always at least five minutes late…but that he seldom admits it. The store clock, he claims, is completely inaccurate. That made his admission rather newsworthy.

“You’re late.” I agreed without inflection.

“I have a reason,” he said very importantly.

Ordinarily I tune him out. In fact, ordinarily, I’m walking out one door when he’s walking in the other. We get along a lot better that way.

But this time, I found myself unwillingly intrigued.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“RACCOONS!”

I blinked. “Raccoons.”

“In the dumpster!”

“Which dumpster?”

“My dumpster!”

“You live,” I reminded him, “in an apartment complex. You mean the dumpster there?”

“That’s what I said! There were raccoons in the dumpster!”

“And you’re late because…?”

“There was a whole family of them!”

“O-kay…” I said, still not really following. I mean, if they’d invaded his living room and held him at knife-point, I could sort of understand. But around here, raccoons and dumpsters are not unlike peanut butter and jelly. You don’t always find them together, but they aren’t exactly an unexpected combination.

“…and you’re late because…?” I prompted.

“I was trying to decide whether to call the cops.”

I stared.

“Wouldn’t you have called them?” he demanded.

“No.”

To be fair, I would, maybe, when I had a spare moment, if I’d thought about it or actually cared, have called the apartment manager/maintenance/whoever. Or, more likely, I’d have waited until the garbage truck came. Problem solved.

Heck, I had a raccoon in my backyard a month or so ago and all I did was throw a stick in its general direction and make sure it had gone over the fence before I let the dog out. It was not, I didn’t think, a matter requiring law enforcement intervention.

He wasn’t listening. He never listens, because in his world when he asks a question, you’ve already answered him according to the script inside his head. Therefore, it’s completely unnecessary for him to engage his ears. While I know I said, “no,” it’s likely that he heard, “OMG yes, for I am merely a weak and lowly woman and I am completely unequipped to cope with the scenario you have described!”

“They have shotguns,” he nodded.

I am somewhat unclear on whether he meant that the police have shotguns (although I can’t see any of them discharging weapons into a big metal bucket) or whether the raccoon family had shotguns…which would honestly have been a much more interesting story.

Hmph.

Yesterday, my koworker was late again. No mention of raccoons, but he did give the store clock an accusatory glare.

I guess things are back to normal…