Answer:
1. Paul acts as a protector for the narrator, by helping her to see what is appropriate for her.
2. "It will not occur to me until I am an adult to wonder if Paul convinced all the kids he could train wild raccoons to compete in swim meets, or if he just made up a kinder explanation for me."
Step-by-step explanation:
"Raccoon Olympics" is a short story where the narrator, who is a child, tells about the day she went with her father to a park where there were many raccoons and Paul, the park biologist is capturing the raccoons because they didn’t have natural predators in that region and were becoming a plague. The narrator asks what was done with the captured raccoons and Paul says that they are taken to a raccoon swimming Olympics. However, as readers we know that this does not happen and raccoons are captured to be executed, but Paul knows that this is not appropriate information for a child to hear and prefers to make up a fun story about what happens to them.