It Was Not a Fart

"Forty-eight years is a life time, and this company, Mr. Holderman, will forever be reflective of that life you gave it." I had been petrified when they asked me to conduct Mr. Holderman's retirement presentation, but I was the only one with any real media editing knowledge, and not a body in the firm had ever been the stand-up-in-front-of -people type; that's why we lived in cubicles.

I wish so many things, given the advantage of retrospect, but chief among those is the simplest: pick any other moment in my entire life to turn around to face the screen instead of the audience.

I had stepped beside him and placed my hand on his shoulder. Suddenly, possessed by the feeling that this was going so much better than anticipated -- a terrible, terrible mistake, every single time -- I paused after a solemn, crowd hushing remark, and faced the video montage projected on the wall.

Then a horrific little creature I remember vividly from my grade school days, bunched up behind my belly button and gave me a catastrophically resonant inner-raspberry, as my backside stared, dormant yet guilty looking, right over dear Mr. Holderman's shoulder.