Life Lessons from Jerry Springer

Recently, my “work wife” and I started a tradition where we occasionally go to my apartment over the lunch hour and watch The Jerry Springer Show. I’m not sure whose idea it was, or why we continue to keep doing it, but it’s a delightful custom, and I have learned many valuable lessons from it:

Life Lesson #1: Neck Tattoos Will Get You Far in Life

According to the episodes I’ve seen so far, in order to get on Jerry Springer, someone in your party MUST have a tattoo on the neck. Your “party” includes:

• you
• your baby daddy/mama
• the person your baby daddy/mama has been cheating on you with
• any other extraneous characters that you bring with you, like aunts, friends, strippers, or farm animals

Life Lesson #2: Self-Defense Skills are Important

Normally, I would NOT be the right person to ask for instruction about self-defense. However, in every episode of Jerry that I’ve seen so far, there’s been some sort of scuffle between guests – and watching these fights has turned me into an expert of sorts.

Here are the tips that you must follow in order to do well in a physical fight – televised or not:

• Take your high heels off first.
• Rather than throwing actual punches, simply spin your arms around like a human windmill. This will make it much harder for your victim to dodge you.
• If your opponent has a weave, you’re obligated to rip it off her head and then proceed to whip it at her.
• Feel free to take a break from the fight in order to show the onlookers your twerking skills. This is completely normal fight behavior.
• When you’re handed a cup of water under pretenses of “cooling off,” it’s imperative that you chunk this across the room at your opponent.

Life Lesson #3: Don’t Buy into Gender Stereotypes

Speaking of fights, the brawls between women on Jerry look much more terrifying than the ones between men. The women are brutal – they kick and punch and karate chop and pull out hair. Meanwhile, the men look like T-Rexes on muscle relaxers. There’s a lot of half-hearted clawing at each other’s faces.

Life Lesson #4: Don’t Give Up on Love

Based on what I’ve seen from watching the show, love can endure all sorts of relationship disasters.

No matter how many of your partner’s relatives you’ve had an affair with (or how many of their limbs you’ve stolen) – he or she will probably still take you back, if you sound convincingly apologetic, and say romantic things.

If romance isn’t your strong suit, these gems from the show should give you some inspiration:

• “Even though I cheated on you with my own cousin, I want you back.”
• “We have to make it work for our kids. Even though one of the kids isn’t actually yours.”
• “You used to make me barbecue. I miss it now.”

And this one, which didn’t actually happen on the show (yet), but still sounds tempting:

• “Let’s go off into the sunset and get our necks tattooed together.” Swoon.

And finally…

Life Lesson #6: Stay True to Yourself

Don’t let others’ judgmental ways keep you from making your dreams come true.

You do you, buddy.

Some might say that The Jerry Springer Show is the cause for society’s decline, but I say that if you look really, really, really hard – and maybe get a little bit drunk – you can find all sorts of important messages. In fact, the show is like Aesop’s Fables, if Aesop had cheated on his girlfriend of six months with her uncle, and then gotten into a fist fight with his best friend on television.

 Has anyone else ever watched this classy show, or similar ones like Maury? What lesson(s) did you take from these shows?