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Do you like your 3.5-min. police response time when you are under extreme duress? Think you can keep it? Think again, because as you are on the phone with emergency dispatchers begging for police as burglars ransack your house, going room to room while you whisper pleadingly on the phone in a bedroom closet, your local police force is embroiled in an hours-long lip-sync production of “No Scrubs” by TLC that may not help you out of your predicament, but is sure to garner plenty of social media shares.
The productions, which seem to get bigger and more grandiose as departments try to outdo each other, generally feature one or two stars who look as though they’ve actually danced and/or heard the song before. These hunky pantomimes usually wave their bicep-stuffed shirt sleeves over their heads, marching point in a phalanx of fuzz, followed by a backup cadre of mustached merry-andrews and spare-tired soubrettes taking a break from their sundry crime-fighting duties to wiggle their variously shaped bodies gelasticly, offering comic relief to the viewers online who aren’t in need of immediate police assistance.
The settings could be anything from a town square to a children’s playground, with most productions including multiple locations to ensure maximum time and resources go into making the productions, and any police force that doesn’t include flashing cruiser lights in its climactic scene is penalized and loses its Ray-Ban sponsorship.
Would-be violent crime victims aren’t the only ones feeling the pinch, however. Across the country, donut sales have dropped dangerously, forcing many mom-&-pop shops to consider closing their doors.
“Every day, our counter used to be packed with officers building up steam for a long day of crime fighting and ticket writing,” says Dale Darenheimer, who, along with his wife Polly, is the proprietor of Donut Taste Good? a small donut shop in suburban Kansas City. Now, Darenheimer says, officers are too busy planning and executing their romping revues to stop and smell the coffee, so to speak. “Now we are left with just our regular retirees, and even they are beginning to look elsewhere as the local infestation of hipsters start to wander in unchecked, asking for smashed avocados, kombucha, green tea, chai lattes, and Pabst Blue Ribbon.”
Darenheimer, who unironically serves hot coffee, cream, sugar, and a delicious assortment of donuts baked fresh each morning, admits he first thought they were Europeans who didn’t speak English, and posted an English only, please sign.
“This is a tragedy,” Darenheimer says. “I hope this challenge goes the way of the Ice Bucket Challenge soon”—which, if Internet attention span history holds true, is a pretty safe bet.
-The Editors
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Editors’ Note: The Editors at TSR support the men and women in law enforcement, especially the very cool officer that let TSR’s Editor-in-Chief off with a verbal warning for rolling through a stop sign July 4, 2017, because he liked the Editor’s mustache and because this is America.
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