Horace

It all started with Horace, or as he preferred to be called, Carp. Horace thought being called Carp was a real belly busting nick name derived from his last name, Carpenter. When old Carp would meet new folks he would always say, "You can call me Carp, like the fish, and no I am not a bottom feeder."

The first time I met Carp he was dressed in what I came to know was his standard issue light grey almost blue 100% polyester dress pants with a white dress shirt. I don't know where he found them but these pants were unique to say the least.

They rode his hips like fry sauce on a tater and had one of those special little flaps of material with a button hole in it that could be secured about halfway round the side of his waist. the front of these pants were plain, and I mean plain nothing there, no pleats no style no nothing. Much like spandex biker shorts his pants clung to every bulge and crevice of his body like a tape worm to an intestine outlining his trouser snake like a ten pound turd in a five pound bag. Carp never seemed to notice.

He had a habit of sitting on the edge of a table when he would talk, and if you were sitting in a chair the show would begin. He must have had that thing trained with all the gyrations and acrobatics it would go through while he talked. Of course everyone tried not to look but like lookey loo's at a traffic accident it was hard to help it.

Now you may be wondering why anyone would be sitting down while ole Carp was a jib jabbing away, why a person wouldn't just leave so as to avoid the "show." You see Carp was a motivational speaker hired by the corporate big wigs to try and motivate and invigorate the company employee's. Actually he wasn't hired directly but by default he is what we got. Originally there was another more qualified speaker who was supposed to come but she backed out at the last minute and recommended Carp. Whether this was a trick used by motivational speakers to give work to Carp I don't know but Carp was working and so was his little friend.

I don't know if Carp lived in a van down by the river but I do know he was as strange as a duck fart in a movie theater.

Carp would start off his motivational speech by saying, "Whoo, I got blind stabbed lucky to get this little doobie. If old Betsy Wetsy hadn't got sick I wouldn't have ever had this chance to meet you fine folks." At this point I should add that Carp sounded like Earnest T from the Andy Griffeth show.

As the verbal prowess continued to flow from his mouth and the acrobatics in his pant commenced he would say something like, "What are you guys looking at? The look on your faces is really starting to freak me out." Once when a fellow peer tried to ask him a question Carp responded with, "It doesn't matter if your left leg is up the sun is shining and it is a half moon it just doesn't matter!"

One of the human resource people that were there said something like, At our company we use had wipes to clean our hands instead of soap as it is more environmentally friendly, to which Carp responded, "Well whoopdidadgumdoo!"

At this point I was having a hard time holding in my laughter and carps trouser snake was giving me the old shut up gesture so I started to write down his sayings rather than take notes as I felt this was a better use of my time and would perhaps allow me to miss out on most of TS's antics. (TS is short for trouser snake)

It was at his point when out of the blue, previously he had been talking about raising minature horses, he exclaimed, "Watermelon? Some eat it!" Huh? So I wrote it down. when talking about something difficult he would say, "it will be like trying to push a wet noodle up a 45 degree slope." Yeah old Carp had a million of them and they just kept coming.

At times I felt as if I were inside a Stephen King novel expecting Carp to shed his human skin and allow his reptilian self out for a snack. When excited he would exclaim, "mugguly, mugguly, mugguly or hookagoochi's." He also had a knack for using acronyms that only he knew what they meant. An example of this would be, "I put an RFP to the PMP who gave me a SOW to put into the WBS as specified in the PMBOK." What the crap er carp?

About this time is when it started to get weird. Carp started to dance around like his tail was on fire and his ass was catching. He asked on of my fellow workers to see if he could do any better. He started to talk about breeding horses and how he had seven hundred mini steers or some such. I started to wonder if he was running some type of animal human sex farm like Doctor Morreua.

Several times I thought I was going to die of laughter or fright or both, didn't know. By now carp was sweating like Lance Armstrong at the halfway point. Only thing was now old trouser bob was looking as if he was going to poke his way out of the dime store pants and attack at any moment. The more excited Carp got the more excited TS got until......

You remember the little flap of cloth holding the pants together? Well the button snapped right off there from all the pressure and out popped..........

A small squirrel........

It seems old Carp liked to have a little company down in his pants for motivation when motivationally speaking and things had gotten little out of hand....er....in squirrel hands.....

After apologizing and while the police cuffed him and the squirrel and hauled them off to wherever they take squirrel molestors....

Carp asked, "whoopdidagumdoo that was exciting, when would you all like me to come back and finish what I started?"