In the department adjacent to mine, I overheard three of my colleagues talking about wild animals, and more specifically, close encounters with these animals. At first, I was mildly interested – one story involved a cougar in a campsite, another had something to do with being about 10 feet away from a bear, another still involved a wolverine, I think.
But though my curiousity was temporarily piqued, the conversation officially Jumped the Shark when one colleague started a story this way, and I'm paraphrasing here (but not by much):
"One time a badger ran in front of our truck..."
At this point, one of the others (the guy who told the wolverine and bear story) stopped her in her tracks with a "A badger? C'mon..."
And you know what? He was right to do it. I mean, seriously – you're bringing a badger story to the table? A fucking badger?
Of course, the badger-tale teller tried to defend her story – which she of course hadn't even finished – and this conversation/disagreement went back and forth for a few annoying minutes, before I'd finally had enough*.
So, what did I do? Well I walked over there, pretending to listen for a few minutes, thus immersing myself in this conversation about badgers, and then said, with a straight face, "Who cares about a badger? A couple summers ago I came face-to-face with a Werewolf. Now that was scary."
Then I walked away. The looks I got were, of course, full of bewilderment, and I'm not entirely sure anybody knew how to respond. Was I actually serious - he can't be serious, can he? Was I being funny? Was I mocking them?
Needless to say, it killed the conversation right there on the spot. Mission accomplished.
*full disclosure: This was the second time today a loud, mostly useless conversation came from this part of the office, so my patience was wearing thin already.
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