The younger readers will already know the meme (this one). The older readers might not know the meme, but they’ll know the stereotype.

It’s an image of a prototypical upper-middle-class house with the caption, “I don’t know if those were gunshots or fireworks.”

The meme poking fun at perpetually paranoid suburbanites in opulent neighborhoods was upvoted more than 14,000 times on the online message board Reddit earlier this year, with one of the top three among 740 comments reading: “I thought the joke was that the house was in Arizona.”

On July 28, dozens of reports of shots fired came flooding in from Homestead, Glennwilde and Alterra, with neighbors blaming illegal immigrants for the so-called shooting and falsely reporting injured victims were transported in an ambulance. The entire thing turned out to be a fireworks show.

After at least three unrelated reports of shots fired in Maricopa yesterday, you might think real trouble was afoot this time — but it turned out to be a particularly busy day for the crowd who calls 911 on every crackle, comet and crossette blasted into the sky.

“Early this morning, I heard what sounded like gunfire somewhere around Rancho Mirage,” Edward Gentscheff, who lives on the east side, said yesterday. “There were three shots, even our pups heard it”

Several hours later, just before 3 p.m., Maricopa Police Department received “a report of loud noises in Rancho Mirage,” spokesperson Monica Williams confirmed. “It was likely fireworks, and we did not locate any evidence to suggest otherwise.”

But the reports kept rolling in — Rancho El Dorado resident Erik Derby said he heard “gunfire” in the Maricopa Meadows midmorning yesterday, and around 8:30 p.m. last night, Brandon Michael Castro said: “I heard more shots fired tonight and a car peeling off about a mile from Rancho El Dorado.”

That’s four reported shootings in less than 12 hours yesterday. So, we asked MPD if it had confirmed any of them happened.

The answer, this morning: “We don’t have any calls of this nature.”