Two Weeks of Freedom
Homeowner associations are very common in suburban neighborhoods. There are a lot of benefits to living in an HOA like a well-kept neighborhood, increased property value, and access to amenities such as community pools or playgrounds. However, living in an HOA isn’t always rainbows and butterflies. Sometimes the bad outweighs the good.
HOA board members have earned an understandable stereotype. They are often viewed as people with prestigious attitudes who abuse their power and harass innocent neighbors to the point of driving them out of the neighborhood. Sounds toxic, right? Now picture the stereotypical “Karen.” They’re easily angered, incredibly entitled, and throw temper tantrums at the drop of a hat.
Those types of people treat others as if they are below them. Or even worse, they act like the world revolves around them. Therefore, if there are two things you don’t want to mix, it’s your stereotypical Karen and a spot on an HOA board. Unfortunately, that pairing took place in our friend “Liam’s” neighborhood.
Liam lived in an HOA neighborhood with his sister and parents. One summer, his parents planned a two-week family vacation. Liam didn’t see the vacation as an opportunity to travel and relax, he saw it as an opportunity to stay home alone for two unsupervised weeks. He offered to house and dog sit while his family went on the trip. He was sixteen years old and capable, so his parents agreed. Little did Liam know, things were about to take a turn for the worst.
~
Handwritten Letters
Liam had a gaming addiction he could feed all he wanted while his parents were away. It didn’t take him long to develop a day and night gaming schedule. Nevertheless, Liam set aside time to complete the chores around the house and collect the mail. One day, he found a strange handwritten letter in his mailbox and decided to investigate.
Liam deciphered the letter was from the president of his neighborhood’s HOA. It said the grass in the front yard was too tall according to the HOA’s regulations. Taking a look at the front yard, Liam saw the grass was indeed too tall. By one centimeter. As ridiculous as it was, he wanted to keep the peace and cut the grass later that day, happy to return to gaming once the chore was complete.
To Liam’s surprise, a new handwritten letter showed up in the mailbox the next day. He opened it with a smirk, expecting it to be a thank you for his quick grass fix. However, the letter read that the roses in the front yard were going too far through the fence by fifteen centimeters. As ludicrous as the complaint was, he didn’t want any trouble and cut the roses back. Liam was finally able to game in peace. Or so he thought. The next day while gathering the mail, he came across a third handwritten letter.
~
On The Third Day
The third letter of complaint Liam received crossed the line. It said the bushes in the backyard were too tall. The issue was that someone would have had to enter onto his parent’s property in order to see the bushes in the backyard. That meant the person behind the letters was specifically scoping his house in order to make complaints (and trespassing). That was Liam’s last straw.
He gathered the three letters and marched over to visit his next-door neighbor whom he knew was on the HOA board. Upon reading the letters, the neighbor laughed and told Liam about the sender. It was a Mega-Karen who lived ten houses down the street. She had been kicked off the HOA board for poisoning three neighborhood dogs with rat-poison-laced treats.
Liam put two and two together and everything started to make sense. He remembered having an encounter with Mega-Karen during his childhood. She threw rocks at him while he was trick or treating one year. After knowing who was behind the letters, he ignored the complaint. At that point, a week had gone by since Liam’s family left. He had one week left of freedom and wanted to make the most of it so he did what any good teenager would do.
~
Busted
Liam started party planning. He was a good kid and went around to all the surrounding neighbors to warn them of the potential noise. Instead of throwing your typical loud, crazy, underage drinking party, he ended up inviting friends over to play video games and drink energy drinks. “My parent’s dining room smelled like teenage farts, axe bodyspray, sweat, and all the chips in the world mixed together,” Liam said. Around one in the morning, there was a knock at the door.
Standing at the door were two cops looking bewildered. Liam’s face held the same confusion.
“We have a report, that there is a loud party going on, and there might be several minors partaking in illegal substances here,” the first cop said.
“Do energy drinks count as illegal substances?” Liam asked.
“No?” the second cop said as if it were obvious.
“Then I have no idea what you are talking about,” Liam replied.
“We had a frantic woman calling constantly which is why we came, but it seems we are more of a disturbance than you guys are,” the first cop said.
At the same time, one of Liam’s friends could be heard in the background yelling, “Liam, get in here! The bomb has been planted and you are the only one alive!”
“You guys playing Counterstrike?” the cop asked.
“Yeah, Counterstrike,” Liam responded.
“We will leave you to it then,” the cop said as they turned to leave.
Liam returned to his friends and enjoyed the rest of the night. He still had a few more days of being home alone and was looking forward to spending them in peace. There wasn’t anything else his neighbor could possibly complain about. It would just be him, his video games, a chore here and there, and his dog. However, the peace was shattered when there was a knock at the door two days later. Liam grudgingly walked toward the door because he had a feeling about who it was.
~
Karenmegasaurus Rex
There she was. The Karenmegasaurus Rex (as Liam liked to call her) in the flesh. She started screaming immediately about how Liam’s illegal party kept her up all night. Liam wanted to say he knew she lived ten houses away but decided to let her continue. She called him a horrible brat who needed to tend to the bushes in the backyard if his parents wanted to keep their house. At that point, Liam almost burst out laughing at how absurd she sounded and stopped her to point out the facts.
He told Mega-Karen that HOAs don’t have the power to revoke people’s houses. He also said he knew she was kicked off the HOA board for poisoning dogs and that he didn’t actually have a party. Lastly, he told her to stay the hell away from his yard. That really set her off. She got even angrier and screamed about how she’d have his family arrested and that the poisoned treats were meant for their dog as well.
That was it! Liam slammed the door in her face. He wasn’t about to let some crazy neighbor threaten his dog like that. It really ticked him off because his dog meant a lot to him. He knew he couldn’t let her horrible behavior slide without consequence and came up with a plan. There were four days before his parents returned which left him plenty of time to get revenge. He started making some calls.
~
The Revenge
Liam called the police and visited his neighbor on the HOA board to get the necessary approvals for his plan. He also went to the neighbors surrounding Mega-Karen’s house to get permission. He was going to do all of their yard work which involved using loud equipment all day. Legally, he could make noise from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm if it was yard work. It was considered “rude” to be doing yard work past 5:00 pm, but he ignored that part because it was still legal.
Liam worked in the yards surrounding Mega-Karen’s house all day, making as much legal noise as possible. He kept leaves and grass flying like a madman. She came out to scream at him many times and even threw rocks at him again. “Just like old times,” Liam thought. Any time she complained, he told her the neighbor’s plants weren’t up to HOA standards. How could she argue with that? It’s the very thing she was using as an excuse to harass him.
While the full day of noise undoubtedly got under Mega-Karen’s skin, Liam didn’t stop there. He checked the weather for the coming Friday ahead of time. It would be the perfect day for a neighborhood barbeque. He had already invited all the neighbors whose yards he worked in. With the money earned from the yard work, he purchased a grill and loudspeaker. He then called and invited all of his friends to make sure there were as many people in attendance as possible.
~
The Final Payback
At 8:00 am on Friday morning, Liam and his friends gathered outside Mega-Karen’s house. They fired up the grill, blasted the speaker, and cracked open some cold ones. The speaker was set to the exact legal limit from the HOA handbook. To Liam’s delight, most of the neighbors surrounding Karen’s house joined them throughout the day.
Mega-Karen screamed at Liam and his friends for an hour straight. She called the cops twice who left as soon as they saw Liam’s permits from themselves and the HOA board. There was nothing else she could do but seethe with anger. They partied all day up until the legal time of 8:00 pm. The goal was to give Karen a real party to complain about and they did just that.
Liam’s family returned home to a perfectly kept house with the yard in better shape than when they left. They had enjoyed the vacation and despite the many disturbances of Karen, Liam enjoyed his two weeks of freedom. He was proud to have gotten back at a stingy person on a fake power trip– especially without breaking any laws in the process. He truly hoped she learned a lesson.
For those wondering, all three poisoned dogs ended up surviving and Karen was served and settled out of court. Liam didn’t hear much about her after that. She ended up moving a few years after his revenge took place as did his parents. He doesn’t know what happened to her in the end but thought to himself, “Maybe she is dead, maybe she is being mean to some kids somewhere else, or maybe she turned around and became a nice person.”
~
