Unattended.
Ordinary.
I looked at it longer than necessary.
My daughter noticed.
“Thinking about the car?”
“No.”
“The son?”
“No.”
“What?”
“The package.”
She laughed.
“There wasn’t even a package in this story.”
“Different trauma.”
She stared.
“How many HOA stories do you have?”
“Too many.”
We laughed.
Then she slipped an arm through mine.
We walked toward her car.
Before leaving, I looked back.
The box still sat there.
Nobody touched it.
That should not have felt like anything.
It did.
At seventy-eight, I attended the old neighborhood picnic.
The community had changed almost completely.
New playground.
Different trees.
The president’s old house belonged to a family with three children.
My old house had black garage doors.
I hated them.
Not my house.
Not my problem.
A young board president approached.
Asian American.
Mid-thirties.
Friendly.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Do you think HOAs should exist?”
I laughed.
“That’s a lot for a picnic.”
“I’m serious.”
“Yes.”
He looked surprised.
“After what happened?”
“Shared property needs governance.”
“Pools.”
“Stormwater.”
“Private roads.”
“Insurance.”
“Budgets.”
“Standards.”
“The problem wasn’t an HOA existing.”
“It was authority becoming personal.”
He nodded.
“So what keeps it from happening again?”
“Nothing permanently.”
That disappointed him.
I continued:
“Records.”
“Elections.”
“Appeals.”
“Conflict rules.”
“People willing to read boring documents.”
He smiled.
“Anything else?”
“Yes.”
“Never let the same person be the only one deciding who broke a rule, what the rule means, and what the punishment should be.”
He nodded.
Then grinned.
“We still have the blue Lamborghini rule.”
I stared.
“What?”
“Unofficial.”
“I’m already against it.”
“Whenever someone proposes vague nuisance language, somebody asks: ‘Could this rule be used to ban the blue Lamborghini?’”
I closed my eyes.
“No.”
“It works.”
“That is humiliating.”
“It’s useful.”
I secretly liked it.
Rules should survive application to people you dislike.
If a regulation sounds reasonable only when imagined against an annoying neighbor, it probably needs work.
The blue Lamborghini test.
Ridiculous.
Effective.
My granddaughter eventually represented that HOA in a legal matter involving a genuine fire-code issue.