Join my gang, or else

     I’m starting a new gang. We’re going to wear Dallas Cowboy jerseys, center our gang activities around Cowboy football games, tag the city with the Cowboy’s star, and our name will be the Day Cruisers – or “DC” as in Dallas Cowboys.
     Criminal gangs have already hijacked our sports teams, our fashions and our religious symbols. I can’t walk around as a legitimate North Carolina Tarheel fan without being accosted as being a member of the Night Cruisers (NC). Well, at my age, I probably can, but innocent teenage kids can’t.
     So, since this kind of thing has already started, I am claiming the Cowboys colors all for myself and my gang members before someone else does. We’re going to wear blue, silver and white rosary beads, put blue bandanas in our pockets and have J.J. (Jerry Jones) tattoos on our necks. We’ll flash 9 fingers (Tony Romo’s number) with one pinky finger down to identify ourselves and our main source of income will be from arranging NFL pots.
     The Day Cruisers will, of course, have to have an initiation rite and a structure that assures the loyalty of our members. A prospective member must eat a raw jalapeño, washed down with a shot of 4-alarm salsa, for each year that the Cowboys have failed to have a playoff win. Right now, that stands at 13. Punishment for disrespecting me, the gang itself, or any individual gang member in any way will be expulsion or that you must drink warm non-alcoholic beers throughout the following Cowboy game.
     Since most Day Cruisers members will be older, married men, we will assure their sustained membership through sexual blackmail. Each member will have to pose nude with a Piedras Negras prostitute and those pictures will be shown to his wife should a member ever leave the gang – or should they ever root for any other pro football team.
     We will wear all our clothing 12 sizes too large, which might be hard for some of our corpulent members who already buy the largest clothes available at the Big and Tall Mens Store. Those guys will just have to find an Extra Big and Extra Tall Mens Store.
     No self-respecting gang lasts long without imposing at least a small reign of terror. We’ll intimidate and harass anyone known to have watched any weenie sport or non-sport, which include golf, tennis, bowling, figure skating or synchronized swimming. They will suffer the pain of having their cable wire cut or satellite dish pulled down, any innocent household members be damned.
     Another thing we’ll do is claim any sports bar as our own any time we please. We’ll do this by bragging loudly about fictional friends that we have in really bad ass gangs like the Mexican Mafia and the Norteños, something like this:
     “My Mexican Mafia friend El Diablo just got out of Huntsville. He’s meeting me here soon and he said he’s going to kill the first guy he sees drinking lite beer.”
     “Yeah, my friend El Muerte from the Norteños is getting here in a minute and he’s going to slice open the first guy that looks at him.”
     We’ll employ some other tactics, too, stolen from typical street gang playbooks. After time, we will give the Dallas Cowboys name and colors such a despicable reputation that nobody else will want to be seen in public supporting “America’s” team. When you won’t wear a Tony Romo jersey to the mall because you’re afraid of getting beaten up over it, that’s when we will know that our gang has truly arrived.