I’m surprised that no one jumped on me when I made my casual comment about disliking the concept of the neighborhood watch. You lot are pretty lethargic, granted, but even the spammers didn’t deluge me with mysterious and poorly punctuated comments only vaguely related to the topic at hand. Really, it’s enough to give a girl a complex.

At any rate, I am not a fan of neighborhood watch associations, which is sort of a problem, because one is starting in my neighborhood, and the masterminds live right next door, so they seem to think that I am going to be all into it, and help convert the masses. Actually, there’s a longstanding neighborhood watch the next block over, and the masterminds managed to get us “invited” to join. And then proceeded to paper the neighborhood with fliers. All this because their garage was broken into by crooks who were too dumb to carry off the loot, ditching it in a nearby shrubbery instead.

In an intriguing reversal of the usual in these situations, the fliers were extremely well written, beautifully punctuated, and stunningly coherent. It brought tears to my eyes when I realized that well written neighborhood watch fliers were enough to cause me not to lose faith in humanity entirely. I’m so used to the mangled English which passes for reporting in the Advocate and a proliferation of illegal apostrophes littering the town like herpes sores that I was astonished to know that someone else in this town can still punctuate and write a coherent statement.

So, one might reasonably ask (although no one did), what is the problem with neighborhood watch?

And I’m so glad you asked, because my issues with the concept of neighborhood watch associations are manifold.

In the first place, I strongly dislike the thought that people need to be told to look out for each other. I am under the apparently mistaken impression that it is my responsibility, as a human, to look out for my neighbors. If I see something sketchy going down, obviously I will take action, and I kind of expect others to do the same. It’s a kind of contract with society, you know, that people should look out for each other. Especially since I am often at home during the day, working, I am sometimes the only person around, so I figure it’s only polite to pay attention, and to be aware of what is normal and what is not.

I say this despite the fact that most of my neighbors goad me into apocalyptic rage at least once a day, what with the chainsaws, the motorcycles, the loud music, the unmuffled trucks, the throwing lumber at my house, the yappy dogs, the weed wackers, the lawn mowers, the leaf blowers, the hammering, the sawing, the screaming children, the blinding lights directed right into my bedroom at night, and all their other charming antics. Although all of these irritate me to a point which I cannot adequately convey in text, I would still lend a shoulder to a neighbor in need, whether that shoulder takes the form of calling the fire department when needed or pulling an idiotic toddler out of the way of oncoming traffic. It’s just kind of what you do.

So, the idea that people do not innately understand this frightens me. I know that things like the Kitty Genovese murder happen, and that frightens me too, and that’s one of the reasons I make an active choice to live in a small town. Because I am under the foolish notion that it is a neighborly place.

Secondly, I am not a big fan of snooping about and spying on the neighbors. And that seems to be the sort of thing the neighborhood watch encourages. I don’t like posters on trains that tell me to report “suspicious looking people,” and I don’t like being told that I should notify authorities about people who are being while black/Middle Eastern/disabled/etc. The neighborhood watch concept has a dangerous whiff of the police state, and I don’t like that.

For one thing, I get up to a fair amount of shenanigans myself. Now, my shenanigans are harmless and even enjoyable, but snoopy neighbors might not know that, and I don’t really want to go around the neighborhood discussing details of my personal life with my neighbors to avoid an awkward situation sometime.

Also, I am a firm fan of being able to get up to a few larks, and it’s hard to do that when people are peering over their fences and dialing the cops every time someone walks past with a spray paint can. (Like, uh, my neighbor the painter. Who uses spraypaint. Sometimes.) Sometimes you just need to walk when it says “don’t walk,” or take pictures when they tell you “no photography,” and neighborhood watch associations stand in the way of all that. And that bothers me, in the name of all that is right and holy.

And, of course, I wonder who watches the watchers.

The last neighborhood watch letter exhorted me to write to city officials to bitch about the homeless, although it included a half-hearted PC attempt to suggest that the homeless aren’t to blame for “all the problems in the neighborhood.” It said nothing about the meth-addled fiends who probably are responsible for “all the problems in the neighborhood,” and it had no suggestions for actually improving the society we live in so that meth-addled fiends do not feel the need to piss on my primroses (yes, it happened), and so that homeless people don’t need to beg for shelter on porches to avoid police persecution.

This whole neighborhood watch thing has raised a very interesting fact, for me. And that is that I have finally reached the age where I am viewed as a potential ally and friend of the neighborhood watch, rather than an insurgent in the green zone. This despite my mildly unconventional appearance and bad manners. And it’s a strange sensation to have ageism rearing its ugly head in the opposite direction. What, like I’m too old to get into mischief? How depressing.

I’m all for organizing community members and keeping neighbors connected. But I would rather have it be for a more worthy cause, like preventing the proposed development of the mill site, or starting a violent revolution, personally. Otherwise we’re going to end up with our very own mutaween.

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