Elma, NY—Convalescing from a shoulder injury he incurred at work, FedEx veteran Marcel Bovine has been healed and more by Judge Judy.
The slow road to recovery for Bovine has been marked by episodes of depression, self-pity and coming to terms with the hard realization that he just isn’t what he used to be. Despite his injury and hopeless state of mind he longed to return to his pointless job of putting Amazon and Target boxes on peoples’ porches and being barked at by bored dogs. Treatments , which included therapy and lathering up his injured shoulder with copious amounts of Bengay, had been largely unsuccessful. This left Bovine plenty of time to catch up on some reading: A Beginners Guide to Bad Tattoos, by Shawn Morrissey ($19.95) and Outwitting Squirrels by James Beefnut($24.95). He also has started to watch television.
Striving to find a work-life balance Bovine had long ago eliminated television from his daily routine, save for self-hating practice of watching Buffalo sports teams. But while injured and depressed he started to watch some television. He would catch some news bits and laugh at anchor Mary Alice Demler’s constant head bobbing while her partner Scott Levin talked. One day he switched the channel to The Big Bang Theory, a show he heard about but never watched. It was after the Big Bang, while in the kitchen fixing a bologna sandwich he heard that severe, sent from heaven, no nonsense voice of Judge Judy.
Shocked at her tone, Bovine watched with glee as Judge Judy dressed down a man who was being sued for breaking all the windows in his apartment. The man persisted in explaining why he broke the windows (a fentanyl freakout), rather than answering her specific questions, which eventually led her to yell at the man to “SHUT UP!!!” The disapproving facial gestures, the harsh rebukes, the stinging put downs—Bovine was in love. While breathlessly expressing this new found love with himself, he unfortunately learned that he still had remnants of an earlier application of Bengay on his finishing hand and burned himself quite severely.
But, it didn’t matter—Bovine was a new man. He quickly became estranged from his wife of thirty-two years, who was just too nice and always let him off the hook. Going forward, whenever he engaged in any task, he had Judge Judy’s hard, dismissive voice in his head. Soon, his shoulder issues dissolved, he found self-respect in those Amazon boxes and barking dogs and most of all he refused to think of himself as not being what he used to be. He so loved the the discipline Judge Judy brought him he even had wristbands made up: WWJJD—What Would Judge Judy Do . . .
But like so many others before him, Bovine was not contented with just being healed and inspired by Judge Judy’s strength and power. After finding out where she lived he showed up drunk off his ass at her home at 2am on a Saturday night hoping not only to thank her for all she had done for him, but to express his love for her. Of course, Judge Judy readily beat the shit out of Bovine, had him arrested and got a restraining order.
As Bovine tells it now, having Judge Judy beat the shit out him was the single greatest three minutes of his life.
