Words for My Enjoyment

WFME’s 10’s on the 10th: Neighborhood Watch Edition

May 10th, 2007

As I promised to all my new readers in Guam, as today is the 10th, I would like to present to you the brand-new WFME feature: 10’s on the 10th.

Today, we take a look at the ten ludicrous requirements/rules from my local neighborhood watch that were included on the insert I got in my Neighborhood Watch folder. I don’t know if this is how all NW’s do it across the country or if my neighborhood just happens to be wacky.

1. Keep your house well lit between the hours of 10pm and 4am. If you do not have lights, you must install them before you have resided in your home for six months, or you will face a fine.
2. Participate in (at least) six “nighttime hunts” over the course of each month, walking through the neighborhood at 11pm each evening, making note of anything that seems out of the ordinary or uncharacteristic for the street.
3. When talking outside on the sidewalk with other residents and unfamiliar vehicles pass by, speak loudly about the “neighborhood watch program” so that passerbys are aware of the program.
4. Remove all wind chimes or other ambient noise makers from your property as they distract from other Neighborhood Watch members from listening for other, more strange, out of place aural signs of no good.
5. Incorporate the concept of Neighborhood Watch in your children’s bedtime stories, allowing them to slowly get acclimated to the concept of the collective.
6. Each month of Neighborhood Watch service is presided over by the “Captain.” The Captain is designated as one who coordinates nighttime hunts, levies fines for uncooperative residents and who possesses the Neighborhood “Watch” — the timepiece that, in any argument, has the actual neighborhood time and must be accepted.
7. Each resident must, at one point during the calendar year, run for office in the Neighborhood Watch Cabinet. Positions that come up for a vote each year include: President, Vice-President, Captain, Minister of Sound, Street Sign Liaison, Sidewalk Director, Children’s Sargeant, Eye of the Hill and Co-Operation Secretary. Bi-annual positions up for elections include El Capitan de Ojos and Dreamweaver.
8. All trees that block a 360-degree view of the closest street light must be torn down immediately.
9. Residents may not paint houses with shades of red, green, black, brown or tan — such colors too closely resemble landscaping and could camouflage houses (causing them to visually disappear from one’s line of sight) thus causing them to be targeted by criminals intent on house burglaries.
10. Each resident who hears a sound, and turns around to hear the thing that made the sound, then doesn’t see the thing that made the sound when they turned around to see the sound — should report said sound immediately to the El Capitan de Ojos.

Posted under 10's on the 10th, Lists of 10, Neighborhood Watch. |