Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
The first time I met Judge Judy as at a holiday camp. I had travelled upstate with my brother, a lumpen boy – much like myself, I suppose – with a penchant for two things: nose picking and ping-pong.
“That’s her!” he whispered one morning, after breakfast.
“Who?”
“Judge Judy!”
He hissed this last as if I were heading his personal League of Dimwittery, which I probably was.
It cost $500 for each of us to earn the week here in the sultry embrace of nature and her crawling things. We hadn’t paid it, but I suspect that our parents had grown sick of the sight of the two of us over the sweltering summer. So we’d been transported in a long bus, driven by an observant complainer, equally taken with kvetching about the weather and ensuring his yarmulke was still attached to his thinning hair; that the weak A/C hadn’t turned it into some kind of religious frisbee.
This was typical. We’d escaped Judge Judy’s omniscient televisual gaze to encounter the real thing during a purported holiday break.
And in swimwear, no less.
The first time we saw her – well, my brother did the spotting, because I wouldn’t have recognised her without the robes and the pissed-off bailiffs – it was on a sun lounge by the camp’s single pool.
Being pasty, doughy kids we generally eschewed the pool, but had to walk past it to get to the rec center, a down-at-heel building which smelled equally of sawdust and kids’ urine. Importantly, it contained a trio of ping-pong tables where whe’d while away the hours other, better-adjusted children would spend on more productive goals like orienteering or the cultivation of nicotine addiction.
I can’t express how mystifying it was to see such a familiar figure of yelled justice reclining by a pool. I don’t understand how the woman lying in the sun in a one-piece swimsuit – black, natch – was the same person who’d provided the moral exemplar (as far as my mother was concerned, anyway) to my life to date. I guess technically we didn’t meet here because – well, what would you say?
She never looked up as we moved past, eyes hidden by enormous glasses, but we were sure we could feel her watching. It became a game: the threat of her notice was punishment itself.
Complaining? Judge Judy’ll get ya.
It began innocently enough. The sneakers I was wearing were too small for my growth-spurt feet.
“These shows hurt,” I had said.
“Shaddup or Judge Judy gonna gitcha!” my brother intoned, ominously.
It went from there, until every thing invoked the wrath of Judy. Everything.
Though I was thirteen, I was still a very timid kid. I had hormones but no idea what they meant, or even what language they were speaking. I was turned on by the girls my age who splashed – in the pool! Just near the Judge! – but felt guilty about it. These girls were beautiful. And I? Some jerk! They danced to tunes blasted from a black portable CD player, and were luminous and beautiful.
Well, they danced once. I remember seeing Judge Judy – who would be so familiar as to call her by her name alone? – raise an eyebrow and turn towards the din.
“CAN YOU TURN THAT OFF?”
Her televisual imperiousness brooked no argument, and they acceded. No more words were spoken. Wind out of their sails, the group took their leave soon after, and the Judge settled back into her lounge.
After that she had the pool to herself.
After a week of close-fought ping-pong games (my brother won; he always did) it was time for the camp to send us back to where we came from, and to welcome new meat to be tenderised by the Great Outdoors. We left as we’d arrived – on a bus, packed with too many kids and too little deodorant.
From behind the pool’s fence, the black eyes of the Judge watched us leave.
I wonder if she thought we were bound for adolescent chicanery? I figured I wouldn’t be, because I’d heard The Voice of The Law in real life, one muggy summer’s day.
And man, those TV speakers don’t do it justice.
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