Ode To Judy

We have a room on our second floor that didn’t really have a name, until yesterday.

Our house is old – over a hundred – and as such, it was built before King-sized beds were the norm for masters. Our “master” bedroom can fit our King bed, but little else. So we have all the rest of our stuff – dressers, closet, TV – in the room next door.

When my kids scream up from downstairs, “MOM! MOM!” and I say, “WHAT?” they say, “WHERE ARE YOU?” and then I falter. Even after nine years here, I still fumpher. “I’m in the room next to my bedroom.” “I’m in the room on the second floor with the TV in it.” It’s clumsy and awkward, but we’ve made do.

Our house is big, with lots of little rooms all over the place. But somehow over the years, each one has managed to acquire its own name. Any one of us can always name where we are.

We have the TV Room, the Playroom. We even have the Wrestling Room (which I call the The Yoga Room, but only to myself). The names define the rooms more than describe them. Sometimes I think of yelling back, “I’M IN THE ROOM-WITH-ALL-THE –CLOTHING-STREWN-ABOUT.” But with that, I could be anywhere.

Yesterday I asked my nine-year-old if he happened to notice where I’d left my slippers and he said, “Yeah, they’re in the Judge Judy Room.”

A name had been bestowed. Simple, direct, unambiguous. That room houses a Tivo, and on the Tivo is recorded one program only. It is where we gather in the evening, me to fold laundry, my husband to unwind. And the kids eventually wander in, drawn (as are most children) to the possibility of securing a more thorough understanding of right and wrong.

I resisted Judge Judy at first. “She’s no Judge Wapner,” I would say. But it didn’t take long for her to win my heart.

Click here for:
Judy's Greatest Hits

(I especially love the doily-collar on her robe.)