From Absurdity to Ludicrous

  Our little community of just under three hundred homes has a Homeowners Association.  With that, many fine ideas get discussed by our elected board and as such, some are actually hatched.  The idea of Neighborhood Watch surfaced with visions of promised security and safety, yet the key ingredient to success for any program is participation; something our community is not in competition for the gold over.  As of late, and just after local elections for Sheriff, a new spin was placed on the Neighborhood Watch idea; the suggestion to incorporate transistor radios into the mix; yes, Walkie-Talkies.  An eager and energetic Deputy Sheriff spoke to the residents during one of our monthly meetings about how his neighborhood had arrested crime in short order using these devices.  He was so convincing that many of us signed up to the program and went running out to purchase the very model radio he suggested.  With that accomplished, we then began talking to one another on our neato-new-devices like kids, and we found delight in the nonsense we transmitted.

In the historic voice of past laments,

“I should have seen this coming”

But I didn’t.

  One fellow in our community is a retired military officer; like myself.  Like it or not, some people hold on to their glory days; oft as not, they try to re-live them if given half a chance.  You see something of it with Little League fathers pushing their sons not just into the game, but to excel; you can also see it indirectly with retired military when they run into another retired military; their conversation gravitates to those old-field-days and personal adventures; it’s really rather nauseating to anyone who wasn’t in the military to witness, because it goes on for hours; meaningless meandering of what the Marines call “sea stories”.  And here in our midst we had a retired officer who set up a radio network on his cul-de-sac that we could mimic for our needs.

  I met him, and to my disbelief, he had a printed SOP (Standard Operation Procedures) with over fifty ‘codes’ to use while patrolling the streets of our subdivision; in addition there was also an authentication table (codes used to verify you’re a member of the club and get permission to enter the NET; kind of like a secret password.  A NET is the abbreviation of the word network, and it means communication on a specific radio frequency.  The idea of using an authentication table for a neighborhood watch is like using a Hilton Hotel as an Ice Cream Stand.  But it was impressive, I must admit, it stirred up all those memories of my years using call signs, and procedural phrases like “roger” and “Ah-firm-ah-tive” (which by the way every time I hear that it makes me think of that little girl survivor of the mining colony named Newt in the movie Aliens.) 

  Now for a heartbeat (or two) I got all spun up in the idea, embracing the notion of training the residents of the community on the proper use of the phonetic alphabet, call signs, and the like.  That is, until telling my wife of our find. She watched me pace the living room excitedly talking about how we were lucky enough to find this guy, and how much legwork he had already accomplished, and the details and acronyms of the procedures that are still foreign to her.  She just sat there watching me, unblinking, until I ran down and stopped for breath; she suppliantly said,

“This is not NASA and we’re NOT building the Shuttle.”

  I swear, it was like I had suddenly been awakened from a magician’s spell.  Of course not…and really…why would we even try to employ such an elaborate complicated program?  Heck, I even volunteered to lead this silliness into the wilderness of chaos.  I sobered up quickly and agreed we would only alienate any possibility of success if we made regular housewives learn this paramilitary stuff; metamorphosing into some kind of vigilante-pseudo-crime-fighters, (with or without capes).  When I mentioned to my wife I was withdrawing my candidacy to run our little militia she smiled and went up stairs humming the theme from the COPS show with intermittent chuckles in the lyrics

“Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do….”