STRANGER THAN FICTION: TELEVISION TALK SHOWS TEACH LESSONS ABOUT LIFE

A lot of people wouldn't like my work schedule. I go in at noon, break around 5 and finish up at 9 or 9:30.

Sure, there's a down side. After two weeks of marriage, I've seen my husband awake for a total of three hours. People tell me it's the key to a lasting relationship.

But on the up side, I can watch the occasional morning talk show before work and Montel after midnight.

Everyone has a talk show, and I mean everyone. There's at least one or two on cable at almost any time of day. In fact, it's just a matter of time before a major network, or at least a small cable channel, wants to give me my own talk show.

We'll call it Nieland's Nitwits.

I absolutely can't believe some of the people who go on these shows and, for a couple hundred bucks and a trip to the studio, talk about the stupid things they've done. Seriously -- would you admit in front of God, your mom and everybody that you had six children and don't know the father of ANY of them?

And the audience really takes the revelations seriously. On the Gordon Elliott show, a woman was sleeping with her stepsister's husband and the stepmother sided with her unmarried daughter.

Stay with me now.

The two sisters and one husband were telling their stories on the show when a woman from the audience grabbed the microphone out of Gordon's hand and yelled, "You BETTER not be sleeping with MY man!"

Let's look at this rationally. No one can argue that the adulteress lacks a little in moral character, but what are the chances of her locating a member of the audience's husband and sleeping with him? Pretty darn slim, I'd bet.

But the guests get more excited than anyone. When one found out her baby's father had 13 other children by six other women, she was understandably upset. Then a member of the audience asked how the man managed to attract these women because he "wasn't all that."

The man said it was because he paid attention to women other men would reject. His former girlfriend went ballistic.

"I KNOW you aren't talking about me!" she yelled. "I may be big, but I got it goin' on!"

I've borrowed that last line as my new motto.

My very favorite talk show topic so far has been "I Can't Have A Relationship Because Of My Paranormal Experiences." We've all had relationship troubles -- he's too jealous, she's obsessed with a past boyfriend, etc. -- but paranormal experiences? As if things weren't difficult enough!

On this particular show, I can't remember the host, a woman told about how her dead husband caused her dogs to come in and pass gas that would "peel the paint off the walls" when she tried to be intimate with her new boyfriend. Dead husband or gaseous dogs? You make the call.

There have been several other topics I've collected over the years, like "Don't Hate Me Because I'm A Virgin," "Women Who Pursue Gay Men," "My Child Won't Leave The Nest" and "Men Who Married Women Who Were Formerly Men."

If I don't get my own talk show, maybe I'll be a guest on someone else's. The topic would be "Uptight Women Who Later Become Liberal And Marry Handsome Men Who Whine Incessantly When Ill And Are Allergic To Cat Hair."

Next on Geraldo.

~Heidi Nieland is a member of the Southeast Missourian news staff.