Author: David C. Nutt

“OK everybody up and let’s get the blood flowing.”
Marcy Partridge rolled her eyes. Yet another impossibly annoying corporate team building exercise. She had no idea why all of a sudden the company was inflicting these motivational morons upon them. Wasn’t it enough to just do the job and go home?
“Let’s swing our arms in great big circles…good…now gradually get them smaller, and smaller…and down. Super!”
“Super?” Marcy thought. It’s not like it was such a big challenge. Why did they let such overly cheerful people in this place? Did they have any idea what this corporation did? An HMO for people of special needs? Did they have to be treated like they had special needs as well?
“OK, OK. As we all know I’m Darla or from our icebreaker from yesterday, Darla who likes Pistachio Ice cream.” Darla giggled. “Darla Pistachio.”
Marcy felt her BP come up just a bit.
“I’m going to turn the next exercise over to Timothy (not Tim or Timmy) who likes, not ice cream, but Frozen Yogurt, any kind, for our icebreaker today.”
Timothy-frozen-Yogurt bounded to the front of the room. Already Marcy felt her nerves get on edge. He had an old school power point thrown up and projected was the word ‘blouse’ arranged in a semi-circle with the letter “C” running through the entire word. Timothy chuckled a little bit. “Get it? C through blouse? Still after all this time this one cracks me up. And there are more, so get with your teams and will give you five minutes and-.”
Marcy could not take it anymore, she stood and started for the door.
“Hey Marcy-Maple Walnut where are ya going?”
Marcy froze. “Butter Pecan,” she said with her teeth clenched. All of a sudden Marcy got lightheaded. She felt feint and the room started to darken. Marcy’s spine got stiff she turned slowly like in a trance. Her eyes rolled back in her head and Marcy lifted her arms up in the air. As she did so, papers, pens, cups of coffee, rose slowly as well. Her co-workers and fellow sufferers started to rise. Everything slowed down.
Except for Darla and Timmy. Darla pushed her hands out as if shoving Marcy away while Timothy went into what could only be described as ‘whooping crane form.’ Together they moved their arms down. All at once the entire room fell gently back into its place, with only Darla and Timothy remaining conscious.

Timothy exhaled. He tapped his ‘hearing aid’ and spoke aloud “Team Nine reporting. Adept identified. White female, 26 years old, most likely unaware of her talent. We’ll need a full team up here. Suggest we go with the standard HVAC carbon dioxide cover story.” Timothy smiled and shook his head. “Good catch Darla. I thought for sure it was the man sitting next to her.”
Darla nodded. “Yeah but when she went for the door I saw a small shift in her Kirlian field.”
Timothy shook his head. “Three full days of this annoying bullshit! Man, If she didn’t pop I would have.”
Darla nodded “Know what you mean. Good thing the icebreakers worked. You know what was on the agenda for today?”
Timothy sighed “Role playing?”
Darla nodded sternly “Yup. Don’t think we could have dialed her back from that one.”