When I Grow Up

When I grow up, I want to be Judge Judy. Well, I don't want to BE her, I just want her job. It has the be the most satisfying job on earth. After being a family court judge for years, now she's on television, handing down the same types of decisions. Only, now, she gets to say what she really thinks. The only constraints are l. She can't award more than $5,000 and 2. She can't send anyone to jail, or hold anyone in contempt.

She doesn't have any patience with deadbeat dads, and seems to relish dressing them down and telling them what scum she thinks they are. And, she lights into men who take loans from their girlfriends and then try to say they were gifts. She'll blithely call a fifty-year-old guy an old fool if he had a 20-year-old girlfriend, and she cleaned him out and left him with an empty bank account.

She's not any easier on women. If she thinks a girl has been a doormat and then decides to sue the ex-boyfriend out of spite, Judy will tell her just how stupid she is, and suggest that she "grow up, put a period, and move on."

I would love to be able to look someone in the eye and say, "You're an idiot, and I'll see you in my courtroom" when they start telling me about being dumped by someone when the whole world knew it was inevitable. And, how about being to tell the woman who leaves her baby with a neighbor and doesn't come back for it, or pay for its upkeep, "You're a bad mother. Welcome to Betty's court."

I'd kill to be able to walk over to a table in a restaurant, where the kids are banging on the table with a spoon, screaming, jumping around, etc, and say "If you can't teach your children how to behave in public, feed them at home and get a sitter when you want to go out. And, leave them at home when you come to court."

Wouldn't it be great to be able to go into Wal-Mart and turn down an aisle where three other shoppers with groaning shopping carts have camped out in the middle so no one can go around them, and say, "Do you people have any idea how annoying you are? Don't you have any sense at all? If you want to visit, go to Starbucks, after you stop off at my courtroom."

Then I'd take them all before the TV cameras and tell the rest of the world what I think of them. And, they'd have to just grin and bear it.

And, I'd be happy.