Yes, I’m sure you’ve been in a deed room, workin’ away on your legal pad, when all of a sudden, a rank stench just penetrates the already musty air. It stops you dead in your tracks, you look up, and you have a look of disgust on your face. First thought, “Okay, who ripped ass in here?” Then, you look around, and everyone else is still crackin’ open deed books, writing stuff down on their pad, or checking their phones. As you’re looking around, you spot someone on your team, and they look back at you. Their reaction is usually, “Did you fart? That was a good one.” You then realize, “Oh shit, smeller’s the feller.” At that point, you gotta hold your breath and get back to deciphering the handwriting from a deed in the 1900s. “Is that a lowercase lor a b?”
I’ve also been in small, cramped, deed rooms when someone decides to rumble down under, and it can be chaotic. People start coughing, gagging, holding their noses, blaming everyone but themselves and muttering WHILE trying to find out whether Joe Bob Johnson owns a 1/8 of a 1/20 royalty on 44.5 acres of subsurface.
However, there’s another school of thought. What if YOU are the one who decided to utilize the hands-free duck call? I’ve been in that position quite a bit, especially after drinking a LOT of beer the night before. (Of course, the next morning is the always-relieving beer shit before I head to the courthouse.)
I have a confession to make: It is hard for me to keep a straight face after I drop ass in a deed room. I don’t hear them because I always have my headphones on while working, listening to some Motley Crue or something, but, I will get dirty looks because of the dirty air. Of course, that’s when I’m standing in one space, “abstracting” from the Deed Book.
My favorite thing to do is crop-dust the deed room. That’s right, I am a King Crop Duster all across the Marcellus Shale. Whether the deed room is big or small, I’ve probably crop-dusted it at one point. Best times to crop-dust? When you’re putting one book up and getting the next one. Or, when your time in the deed room is up for the day… you’ve been holding it in for a few hours, and as you’re walking out, you just let it rip, leaving no time to scout reactions to a crop-dusting.
I bet my other colleagues have a few cheese cutting stories they could add during their days spent in deed rooms.
Song of the day: “Smokin’ in the Boys Room” by Motley Crue. The title of this entry should be sung to this tune… “Fartin’ in the Deed Room.”
