Modern Day Moats

I think that the modern day moat is a front lawn, the draw bridge is the garage door and the carriage is the car. If you stare straight ahead driving past your neighbor’s house and don’t look at them, you can pull right into your garage and not have any reason to make contact of any kind. That is, until they behave badly like, for example, playing loud music.  Then someone picks up the phone and calls the Police, “911. What is your emergency?”

One of the more common 911 emergency calls is for… you guessed it, loud music. People do not always share the same appreciation for a particular style of music played at high volumes. For whatever reason, it seems right to call a police officer to tell a neighbor to turn down the music rather than ton walk next door and ask in person. I guess 30 feet of lawn is too far to walk. That or there are alligators hiding in the tall grass. Thus my job is to deal with one grown adult who calls the cops to tell another grown adult to turn music down. Really?

People calling 911 tell the dispatchers that they want no contact. That means I am supposed to walk up to the door of some stranger, who is doing nothing other than listening to loud music on a Saturday afternoon, and tell them they are in violation of disturbing the peace.

“Who called on me?”

“I can’t tell you.” I might as well say, “Neener, neener, neener!”

Sorry but this is not the job I signed up for. After going to the same loud music calls in the same neighborhoods over and over, week after week. I had enough. This had to stop. It was time to drop the drawbridge, cross the moat and storm the castle. 

What is it about people separated by twenty feet of grass that were unable to talk for 15 seconds? “Hey neighbor, can you turn your music down please?” “Sure.”

So I take a different approach with neighbors that can’t get along. I go right to the front door of the person calling to complain:

“Hi, are you the person that called about the loud music?”

“Yes.”

“How many times have you called the police for loud music?”

“Four or five.”

“Have you ever gone next door to introduce yourself?”

“No.”

“Let’s go right now.”

They usually look a little surprised but I don’t give them a choice. This is the procedure we use for these types of calls. We walk across the 30 feet of grass from one castle to the other.

Knock, knock, knock.

“Who is it?”

“Hi, this is Mike Aspland from the Police Department. I wanted to introduce you to your next door neighbor, Joe. He wanted to ask you a favor.”

“Uh, Hi. Can you turn down the music?

“Sure no problem.”

Ladies and gentlemen we have a relationship!  Cops never have to go back there again.

What is it about our culture that says it isn’t ok to ask someone to quiet down? Will they be offended? Will they not like us? Will they, God forbid, get to know us, start a friendship, go to church with us and maybe accept Jesus?  

Jesus talked about dealing with neighbors 2,000 years ago.

Luke 11: 5-10, “Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Do you know your neighbor? Don't wait for something annoying to happen before you venture out across the drawbridge.