who's on judge mathis today? #287

an idiotic recap of the greatest syndicated courtroom show of all time

plaintiff: rhonda from chicago, illinois. heyyy, auntie! rhonda stomps down the courtroom catwalk™ looking fierce in a sheer turtleneck dress (pause and picture that) over a lacy black slip (???) topped with a bolero embroidered with sparkly silver piping around the lapels and wrists. her silk press is laid, her pearl earrings look sophisticated and expensive, and her blazing orangey-red lips can be seen from space. a true glamazon!!!!!!!

defendant: kelvin from chicago, illinois. kelvin is looking casket sharp in a fitted royal blue suit, the busiest blue and purple splatter-effect dress shirt (?) i have ever seen, and a skinny dark blue fashion tie. he’s wearing hip rectangular glasses and, possibly, tinted moisturizer?? where the fuck did these two meet, on project runway?????

the complaint: rhonda and kelvin got engaged within two months of dating (oh no!) and planned a wedding for the next month (oh no! oh no!) now rhonda is suing kelvin for wedding costs because he called off the nuptials (oh no! oh no! oh no!) just hours before the ceremony.

what does she want: $3514 (WHAT KIND OF DAMN WEDDING WAS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE)

how it went down: rhonda begins, “your honor, i haven’t seen mister lee since the day he called off our wedding.” hot damn, what an opener! “i thought that this was it for me, i thought he was the love of my life—” okay let me ask a genuine question i genuinely think about that perplexes me: isn’t it weird to call someone the “love of your life” before, you know, you’ve lived the better part of that life with them??? i saw some very young person say it publicly the other day and i was impressed by their boldness and confidence, and also terrified for their inevitable fall back to earth. at twenty-two years old the love of my life was peanut butter sandwiches, or maybe jonathan from new kids on the block. HOW COULD THAT KID BE SO SURE. anyway, i admire rhonda’s misguided optimism. (i feel like the actual love of her life wouldn’t call off their wedding but maybe i’m stupid!)

rhonda said that she and kelvin knew they wanted to be together because they are both old christians who believe in god. (my words) she says they got engaged october 9 and immediately planned a wedding for november 16, which sounds insane to me. rhonda says that kelvin then totally humiliated her and, speaking of humiliating, she begins to “cry.” except no tears are coming out? it’s disturbing to watch her face scrunch up and her red lips twist as her eyes rapidly flutter and spasm, trying to conjure up even the barest hint of moisture, for ten real seconds which is sooooo long. she looks like anthony demartino! this is upsetting, i am upset.

because rhonda has been overcome with painful-looking fake emotion, the judge instead turns his attention to kelvin and asks for his side of the story. “your honor, we’re here today because [rhonda] is certainly angry about my calling off the wedding, and i felt i had very good reason to do that.” i don’t know if it’s his regular speaking voice contrasted against rhonda’s paroxysm of invisible weeping on the other side of the room but kelvin is almost terrifyingly calm. kelvin, speaking like the most boring pastor at the dustiest church service you’ve ever been to in your life, says that he would’ve married rhonda without a wedding, but “she paid for it because she wanted it. and now, because of her own actions, the wedding was called off.” holy shit, what did she DO?

kelvin says that he met rhonda in august and was set to marry her in november (i love romance!) and greg interjects to ask, “and you thought you knew her well enough after fewer than ninety days?” kelvin says he thought he did, and rhonda agrees. okay then what the hell are we here for??? rhonda says that kelvin “displayed some suspicious behavior when it came to phone calls” and yeah i’m gonna need an example of what the fuck that means. luckily, the judge agrees with me. rhonda says that she would call kelvin on the phone and he’d say something like “i’m on the phone with my brother, let me call you back” and it would take him several hours to return her phone call.

well first of all, that’s just called being old and black. i can’t get my old ass sisters off the phone to save my fucking life. my sister jane has this trick where she’ll text me something innocuous, i’ll respond, and before my finger even leaves the screen that shit is lighting up with a call, and when i don’t answer she will immediately text “I KNOW YOUR PHONE IS IN YOUR HAND.” and she’s right, but i can’t answer unless i’m ready to spend a minimum of one hundred and twenty-seven minutes listening to her talk about a bunch of shit i don’t care about but am forced to politely nod through because i don’t want to get in a pointless fight. if i pick up, i have to start plotting my exit at least half an hour before i actually need to get off the phone because my usual excuses don’t faze her. if i say “gotta go, i have emergency diarrhea” she’ll just say, through a mouthful of whatever she’s having for lunch, “i’ve been changing your shitty diapers since you were born, that doesn’t bother me.” that is 1 disgusting and 2 a really good trap. what i’m saying is……………..this doesn’t seem that weird to me? every phone call with an adult sibling inevitably devolves into litigation over some bullshit that happened in 1987, and that can take awhile. and sometimes even after a short phone call you gotta walk around your room for a minute or meditate through some deep breaths or pause check your socials! if somebody tells me “i’ma call you back” i don’t start to get pissed for at least three business days. rhonda needs to relax.

rhonda says the night before the wedding, as they were “decorating,” she “quietly approached” kelvin while he was on the phone and he turned on his heel and walked away from her. is that a rule, like not being able to see the dress? maybe dude was like “it’s bad luck for you to overhear my hushed conversation with a woman who isn’t you before the ceremony!!!!” rhonda then followed him out of the venue, where he informed her that he was upset because she questioned him about the phone call and said that he “had a life before he met [her]” and she couldn’t “control” him. am i fucking insane? because i’m about to defend a man. if i’m on the phone, bitch i’m on the fucking phone. if you need something from me, whisper what it is so i can decide if i need to stop conducting my personal phone business to deal with it. if you just want to know who i’m talking to, walk your nosy ass in the other room and eavesdrop. I TALK LOUD AS HELL. kelvin then told rhonda she wasn’t the woman for him and called off the wedding.

i’m a fucking sociopath, so i get it. if you don’t like to be interrupted while on the telephone, you can’t marry a telephone interrupter! i’m pretty sure that’s in the bible!!! if our wedding is so cheap that i’m up the night before hanging up streamers and shit (i say this without judgment; kirsty and i got married on the deck next to a grill with hotdogs on it) i have zero qualms about calling it off. i’m taking my party city balloons and my unlimited minutes and getting the hell outta there to find a wife who will let me gossip in peace.

kelvin’s version: his employer called and he stepped outside the church to take it because he did not want to be disrespectful to god. rhonda came storming out after him, accusing him of being on a call with “a woman from atlanta.” kelvin says that was a huge red flag for him, and not the kind of relationship he wants at this point in his life. amen, brother. the judge asks kelvin when the red flags started, and kelvin produces a printed out text sheet™ in which rhonda says “i’m feeling uneasy and i’m not sure we’re truly connected,” a message that she sent him the day after accepting his marriage proposal. i’m sorry, what???

the judge reads more of the text, in which rhonda says, “i’m not sure i’m the one for you.” rhonda’s defense is that she lashed out because kelvin can be curt and short when he is angry, which i agree is some shit you don’t want to deal with. why didn’t they just call the whole thing off? or, you know, spend a year (or two) getting to know each other better? if you get into it with some grumpy guy you’re dating you can just cool off for a few days without having to wonder whether or not your souls should be forever intertwined; signing up for a lifetime with a dude you just met elevates every squabble to world war three.

rhonda says she paid for the wedding in its entirety because as soon as she and kelvin got together he quit his job without telling her first. forget “short and curt,” we got a problem if you’re expecting me to walk down the aisle with “strapped and broke.” kelvin’s explanation is that he worked 12-hour nightshifts at the time, and the night he quit was particularly taxing, but he couldn’t tell rhonda about it because she was too busy losing her shit on him for not calling to “check in” earlier during his shift. rhonda proceeds to present evidence against herself, a printed out text sheet™ in which she accuses kelvin of not calling because obviously someone had “caught his eye at work.” i’m about to go lie down in the street.

these people are easily between 62 and 117 years old: at what point in our emotional maturation do we evolve past “you missed this arbitrary deadline i set for you, you’re probably cheating” or is this just something some of us take to the grave? imagine sliding your reading glasses onto the tip of your nose and prying open your jitterbug phone with your bulbous arthritic knuckles just to accuse a man who eats oatmeal for dinner of fooling around on you. i’m cryyyying. greg reads another text in which rhonda says “i told you if you mess me up you’re out of my life” and i’m sorry but it sounds like kelvin was just following her directions!!!!!!

the ruling: rhonda is mad that kelvin called the wedding off at 9:30 at night when their wedding was scheduled for 1:30 the next afternoon and i feel that. give me at least a week, damn! she says she had to get up at five in the morning on what was supposed to be her wedding day to start texting their guests that the wedding was off. that sucks, although can you imagine the relief those guests felt? i love when people cancel plans. i mean, waking up to a text that your entire day has been cleared and you can take that slow cooker you bought them back to kohl’s? that’s the dream!

greg asks rhonda if she and kelvin had agreed to each pay half, and she says kelvin was going to “pay for what he could pay for.” the judge points out that she’s asking for all of the money back, and she says that’s for the humiliation she suffered. well babe, if humiliation paid dividends i’d be swimming in money like scrooge mcduck. kelvin drones that he was “amenable to paying” (he really is a cyborg, wow) but says rhonda knew his circumstances. plus he’d told her that he didn’t need a wedding to marry her but she adamantly insisted they have one. the camera zooms out to reveal that rhonda has been standing next to a headless mannequin draped in her unused wedding dress this whole time, and honestly? give her all the money for doing that. it’s so bleak. and judge mathis must concur, because he says that kelvin misled rhonda up until their wedding day and for that she deserves three thousand dollars. in the hallway outside the courtroom kelvin menacingly says to rhonda, “you will give me that ring back” and the camera quickly cuts away. terminator 7 coming soon to a theater near you!

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “you can hide anything from a person for ninety days! he could’ve had a crack habit!! maybe he called off the wedding to go hit that thang!!!”

*bangs gavel*