“A possum,” Janice stated, calm, firm, and shocked. For one second the meeting stopped, the air sucked out of the room. All because of a marsupial.

Karen from Accounting stopped, covering her mouth with her hand. Jonathan from Operations leaned forward over the conference table, just to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.

The possum looked into the conference room, not understanding who all these people were, unhurried like a CEO with zero agenda, waiting on the team to fill him in.

Francis laughed, snorting hard. Her snort set off a chain reaction of laughter, stopping the conversation.

In that quick reactive moment? Nobody cared about Q3 projections. We were just people in a room, alive and ridiculous, watching a marsupial nap through our 2 o’clock.

He moved slowly, peeking back to see if anyone was following. We weren’t. We just watched him leave.

The possum left. And I’m wondering if the meeting ever really recovered. If it didn’t? That was fine, too.