Update on the TUMS witness:

I was in yet another deposition today involving all the same parties (therefore all the same attorneys and experts who were in attendance at yesterday's deposition, and the same court reporter, basically all the same exact people in the same exact room, with the sole exception of yesterday's deponent, who had already flown back to his home state), and during a break, we talked about the guy in his absence ... specifically, we all talked about the bottle of tums he had on the table yesterday. He did in fact finish off the entire half of the bottle (that big plastic bottle with the multi-colored tablets? you know the one I'm talking about?) that he started off with, by the end of the day. But what I learned today, that only three of the people who were sitting closest to him yesterday (those three being his own attorney who sat to his right, the lead attorney asking the majority of the questions who sat directly opposite him, and the court reporter who sat to his left, at the head of the table) noticed, was that he came back from lunch with a mylanta mustache. Not a milk mustache; he did not drink milk at lunch. But he was seen drinking straight from a bottle of Mylanta at the end of the lunch break, right before we started back. And he must've been a sloppy Mylanta drinker. Because once we got going again for the second half of the day, the Mylanta that had spilled onto his face above his upper lip when he swigged from the bottle dried and became milky white and crusty looking, and stayed that way for most of the rest of the afternoon.

His own attorney confessed to trying to give him the silent sign to check his upper lip any time they made eye contact, by brushing his own upper lip with his finger, but I guess the guy didn't get it. But at least he must've noticed in during an afternoon bathroom break, b/c it was gone after that. Poor guy. At least none of us laughed at him or made fun of him to his face yesterday ... but I guess if you don't show up for something you're free game, even by your own attorney, because we sure did get a collective chuckle sharing thoughts about the TUMS and the Mylanta mustache today.

How do you spell relief?

Day-long deposition today. Expert witness deponent, hired consultant. Large, crowded conference room, lots of attorneys, lots of other hired consultants for the other parties.

Half-way through the day my associate leans in to me and whispers, "have you ever been in a deposition before where the witness put their bottle of tums on the table like that?" It took me a second to understand what she said. I looked over at the witness, who was down on the far side of the conference table from me, and noticed for the first time the half-empty bottle of tums sitting at his elbow. And I proceeded to lose my shit.

I don't know if it was actually as funny as it seemed at the time, but in that moment, it turned my giggle box over on its ass. I have never struggled so hard and for so long to keep my laughter silent and smothered behind my hands in a setting like that. Tears started streaming down my face, I couldn't get my laughter under control.

And my answer to her question, once I was able to speak (or rather whisper) again, was no. It doesn't surprise me that a witness would bring antacids with them to a deposition. But that is in fact the first time I have ever seen one plant the antacid bottle within reach on the table right next to all the exhibit notebooks containing all the thousands of pages of documents, and pop tablets so conspicuously as he gets grilled by attorneys. Not that I blame him. But it was seriously funny.

But Halloween is over ...

I had a deposition today, one I was defending. Big case, big witness. I had taken a lot of documents I'd need for it home with me last night, partly to do some last review in anticipation of the depo, mostly so I'd have everything I needed to take with me, so that I could go directly from home to the depo this morning w/o going by the office.

So when I was getting ready to leave my house for the depo this morning, I had a lot of stuff to pack up to take with me. And I remembered a soft messenger bag that I knew I had somewhere that I thought would hold more than what I had been using. Dug around a little in the upstairs of my old house, through all the junk that's accumulated in my study, and found what I was looking for. Took the bag downstairs and threw in all my stuff, grabbed a to go cup for my coffee, headed out the door, straight to the depo.

When I got to the law firm, I pretty much dumped out all my stuff onto the conference table and then just sorted it quickly into big stacks. Big stacks of documents. And the deposition began.

Maybe ten mintues into the deposition, my associate attorney, who was sitting next to me, pinched my arm gently, unnoticeable to anyone else. I looked over at her, and she inclined her head towards one of my stacks of documents. I looked, and holy shit, there was a ginormous spider crawling up the side of the stack of papers.

Bless her heart, my associate stood up and discretely picked up a napkin at the coffee/drink bar behind us, scooped up the spider with it, and tossed it in the trash. I was still trying to hide my squirminess and squealiness and girly need to shriek about the eek!gross!eww!yikes!omg!spider!spider!getitaway!eek! feeling about the whole thing. I was seriously thinking to myself, "stop the deposition! tell them we have a situation, this is an emergency, spider! spider! big one! stop the deposition!" But before my mouth formed the words my brain was screaming, my associate had dealt with it, the spider was gone, and as I looked around the table, I realized that no one else had even noticed, or at least had not thought to pay one bit of attention, to what was going on over on my end of the table.

I'm assuming, I mean it's pretty obvious, that what happened is that some big-ass creepy spider had hidden itself away into my messenger bag that I'd left lying around, opened and empty, in a room of my old house for who knows how long. And it must've attached itself to the documents I threw into the bag this morning, and it came right out with them when I put all my stuff on the table. So, sure, understandable. Not normal, not something that happens any old day, not welcome certainly, but explainable. And discreetly dealt with by my associate. My very capable female associate.

We both maintained our professionalism, completely and totally. On the outside anyway, which, hey, is all that really matters, right? I mean, no one even noticed, like I said. But eww! eww! eww! omg! I really really really wanted to jump up and squeal and demand that one of the men in the room kill it. Which, actually, makes me thinkg that maybe my associate is a more evolved female than I am. I apparently am still a bit of a whimpy woman when it comes to things like creepy crawly spiders, no matter the tough aura I attempt to give off when wearing my power suit and defending my key witness in a day-long deposition at a big firm in a big big case. Power woman, reduced by spider.