“That car is history.”
“It was transportation.”
“It was a Lamborghini.”
“Expensive transportation.”
“Grandpa.”
“What?”
“You’re impossible.”
Family repeats itself in safer ways if you are lucky.
By the time I was seventy-eight, I no longer drove much.
My daughter handled errands.
I still attended the old neighborhood picnic once a year if invited.
The community had changed almost completely.
New playground.
Different trees.
The president’s old house belonged to a family with three children.
Nobody knew who had lived there before.
My old house had been remodeled.
The garage doors were black now.
I hated that aesthetically.
Not my house.
I kept opinion to myself.
At one picnic, a younger board president approached.
Asian American man.
Maybe thirty-five.
He knew the story.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Do you think boards like ours should exist?”
I laughed.
“That is a large question for a hot dog line.”
He smiled.
“Seriously.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Shared property needs management.”
“Pools.”
“Roads.”
“Stormwater.”
“Landscaping.”
“Budgets.”
“Rules can solve coordination problems.”
He looked surprised.
“Given what happened?”
“Especially because of what happened.”
I continued.
“The answer to abused governance is not necessarily no governance.”
“It’s constrained governance.”
“Records.”
“Appeals.”
“Elections.”
“Conflict rules.”
“Transparency.”
He nodded.
“What about people who don’t participate?”
“That will always be problem.”
He smiled.
“Our last election turnout was forty-one percent.”
“That’s excellent.”
“For HOA?”
“Practically democracy miracle.”
We laughed.
Then he said:
“We still have one rule named after you.”
I stared.
“What?”
“Unofficial.”
“I dislike already.”
He grinned.
“Whenever someone proposes a vague nuisance rule, somebody asks, ‘Would this let us ban the blue Lamborghini?’”
I closed my eyes.
“No.”
“It works.”
“Please stop.”
He laughed.
I secretly liked it.
Not the fame.
The test.
Rules should survive being applied to people you dislike.
If a policy becomes absurd when used against somebody wealthy, annoying, poor, Black, white, popular, unpopular—maybe the policy is too vague.
The blue Lamborghini test.
Ridiculous.
Useful.
The last time I drove through the neighborhood alone, I stopped across from my old house.
Not intentionally at first.
Then I recognized the oak tree.
The exact place where the investigator’s black SUV had been parked.
The tree was larger.
The curb replaced.
No sign.
No plaque.