Hey, New Jersey: Suddenly Scared You're of a Few Drones? Get Outta Here.

I spent 18 years cowering from the tough, fearless, scary people around me. One guy at my suburban gym wore a giant necklace that told everyone, in less polite terms, to lay off.

So it made no sense to me that the state is now afraid of drones.

My home state's brand is toughness. The state slogan is something a scary teen says before opening a locked freezer: "Come See for Yourself." The capital, Trenton, welcomes visitors with Hollywood-size letters stating "Trenton Makes. The World Takes," implying that someone will be sent to collect on that debt.

We're Tony Soprano, Frank Sinatra, Danny DeVito, and the cast of "Jersey Shore." Even our nerds are scary. To show how dangerous direct current was compared with his alternating current, Thomas Edison had his technicians stage and film the electrocution of a circus elephant.

Yet New Jersey has entered such a panic that the FAA issued a month-long ban on drones over most of the state. In just two weeks, New Jerseyans sent more than 5,000 reports to the FBI about drone sightings. When I lived in New Jersey, it was a well-understood rule that the only tips you give the feds are cash. You didn't call the FBI if your uncle was murdered and you knew which other uncle did it. But now if you see a couple of lights in the sky you don't understand, you snitch on them to the feds? Some people in New Jersey are claiming these are UFOs. This is not at all acceptable. If you're in Kansas, sure, you tell everyone you saw a UFO. In Jersey, if you get probed by aliens, you keep that information to your goddamn self. If there's one thing we learned from Jimmy Hoffa, it's that in New Jersey, unidentified things stay unidentified.

Even Jersey politicians, who have traditionally behaved as though they are not afraid of anything including prison, are acting scared. Republican Congressman Jefferson Van Drew, who reps the shore, said that he was absolutely sure the drones were sent from an "Iranian mother ship" sitting off the coast of Cape May.

Since when are people from New Jersey afraid of boats? My mom lives in Brick, N.J., which is a shore town next to Wall, N.J., because our state doesn't like fancy names. There's a boat parked next to a house near her called "Ass Gremlin II." Which means that the name "Ass Gremlin" was such a hit it was passed on to the next generation. With the drone-induced softness, it's likely we'll never see an Ass Gremlin III.

New Jerseyans shouldn't even be noticing drones. You know how many times I gazed up at the sky while I lived in Jersey? Screw you. That's how many times. Maybe in Nebraska you drive a girl to the wheat fields and stare at the stars while trying to figure out a way to make out, but in Jersey you go to someone's basement and say, "What's your tongue taste like?" I lived in Jersey until I was 18 and I never even knew where the sky was. I think the Short Hills Mall had a skylight in it and we figured the builders put it there so they could sneak in at night and steal leather jackets from Chess King.

I'll excuse anyone in New Jersey over 90 who was scarred by Orson Welles' 1938 radio play of "War of the Worlds," especially since there's no way to explain what a drone is to them. But everyone else in Jersey has to get a pair. Gabagool.