Dialogue: Hang loose: keep saying never again and again

Forget about tacking an extra half-hour for physical activity on to the school day. Surely teaching children good relationship skills is more important than sport. We should just send them home to watch Judge Judy on television every evening instead.

If they pay close attention to this programme, they will be able to handle their future relationships with great dignity and aplomb. Being able to identify and avoid the common traps for young players will save them years of angst and grief.

Can't you see the headlines? "Everything I needed to know I learned from Judge Judy's show." It's a promising line for a rap song.

Okay, we know she always takes the woman's side of the argument. But if you bothered to watch the show, you would soon realise why.

Most of her cases involve savvy women trying to extricate themselves from loser guys. The show could be called "Why Smart Women Hang Out With No-hoper Men." But that's another story.

Anyway, here are the rules for a stress-free life.

* Never let a guy sponge off you. Paying rent, electricity and phone bills for a guy you've just met is plain dumb. So is paying his medical and dental bills. If you do all that for a person without some agreement in place, you deserve everything you get. Judge Judy would probably award in your favour but you really should be sentenced to three years in a home for the terminally stupid instead.

For the record, there no doubt are similar cases of loser women taking men for a ride, but we seldom see those on Judge Judy's show.

I suspect that men tend to be more philosophical than women when they get used. While males just have another beer and congratulate themselves on having escaped the gold-digger, women will seek to exact revenge from every viable avenue.

* Never take up someone else's car payments. It seems to be quite common that a person will help a friend or relative out of a financial hole by taking over payments for a car. While this seems a worthy act, when the relationship turns to custard it is in fact fraught with difficulty. Even the venerable judge often has trouble sorting this one out.

* Always get two copies of every photograph. That way you will each have your own personal photographic record when you split. The number of times Judge Judy mediates over who is going to get custody of the family picture album is simply incredible. And you can just tell that neither partner could actually care less about photos documenting their terminated relationship. They just want to cause maximum annoyance to the other party.

* Never lend money to a family member. If you are not a regular viewer, you would never believe the number of times a daughter takes a mother to court, or a brother takes a sister to court, or a father takes a son to court. The permutations are almost endless. Its amazing to think that someone is prepared to face the breakdown of cordial family relations for the grand sum of $200 (that's American dollars). But clearly tensions are wound up tightly once money is lent to relatives.

* Never let a friend make your wedding dress. This scenario pops up every so often. It goes like this: a friend offers to make another friend's wedding dress and everything is hunky-dory - until the frock ends up making the bride look like the back end of a bus and her wedding day is just, like, totally ruined. In these instances, the bride usually tries to claim for mental anguish, too, but she seldom gets away with that one.

* Never let someone store your furniture for you. For some unknown reason this seemingly innocuous activity invariably leads to grief. When the owner tries to claim the furniture back, someone always ends up holding it hostage or disputing the ownership of the stored items.

* Never let a partner take nude or erotic photographs or videos of you. There will be tears before bedtime if you split up after that. (I'm sure that the potential consequences of this don't need spelling out.)

So if someone asks you to participate in one of these inadvisable activities, you should simply take a deep breath, tap the front of your head a few times with your index finger and ask: "Do I look like I've got 'stupid' tattooed on my forehead?"

Oh, and one more thing: if, despite all the advice, you do break any of the above rules, please don't try to sort the ensuing dispute out on a television show that is syndicated around the world.

We can all do dumb things occasionally but there's really no excuse for publicising them.

* Shelley Bridgeman is an Auckland writer.