If you’ve ever lived in a neighborhood with an HOA, you know there’s always that one person.
The self-appointed rule enforcer.
The clipboard-carrying busybody who can quote the community guidelines better than the bylaws committee.
For us, that person was Roger.
Roger took HOA enforcement to new heights—or depths, depending on how you look at it.
He wasn’t just thorough; he was relentless.
Mismatched flower pots? Fine.
Trash bins out 10 minutes past pick-up? Warning.
Kids’ chalk art on the driveway? Don’t even think about it.
If there was a way to ruin a perfectly pleasant neighborhood moment, Roger would find it.
I’d managed to avoid his wrath for the most part, but when my mismatched flower pots caught his attention, I knew my luck had run out.
What I didn’t know was that karma was already preparing the most poetic payback for our self-proclaimed neighborhood sheriff.
The Flower Pot Felony
It started with the pots.
I had a pair of terracotta planters on my front porch—nothing fancy, just a place to keep my herbs. One was a cheerful burnt orange, the other a slightly darker shade that I’d bought on clearance.
They weren’t perfectly identical, but they were charming in that “real people live here” kind of way.
Roger, of course, didn’t see it that way.
I was watering my rosemary when I heard the distinct shuffle of his loafers on my driveway. I turned to see him standing there, clipboard in hand, his face scrunched in disapproval like he’d just smelled something foul.
“Julie,” he said, voice dripping with faux politeness. “I couldn’t help but notice…”
He gestured toward the pots.
“Your planters don’t match. That’s a violation of section 4.2.3 of the HOA guidelines—‘consistent aesthetic presentation.’”
I blinked at him. “You’re joking, right?”
Roger adjusted his glasses and tapped his clipboard. “I assure you, I am not.”
I wanted to laugh, but the $50 fine notice he handed me wiped the smile right off my face.
I paid it, mostly to avoid further conflict, but as Roger shuffled away, clipboard tucked under his arm like a weapon of mass irritation, I made a mental note to add him to my ever-growing list of grievances.
The Inspector of Perfection
Roger’s reign of terror wasn’t limited to me. If anything, I got off easy with the flower pot fiasco.
My neighbor Linda got fined for leaving her garden hose coiled on her lawn instead of tucked away, “per guidelines.”
The Johnson kids were written up for leaving their bikes in the driveway overnight.
And poor Mr. Hargrove, who had just moved in two months ago, was reprimanded for painting his mailbox the “wrong shade of beige.”
At first, the neighborhood tried to humor Roger. We rolled our eyes at his clipboard and grumbled under our breaths but figured he’d ease up eventually.
He didn’t. If anything, he got worse.
One Saturday, during our annual block party, Roger showed up with his phone camera and clipboard in hand, jotting down infractions.
“Parking outside of designated areas,” he muttered to himself, snapping a photo of Mrs. Everett’s SUV parked halfway onto the curb.
He walked past our picnic tables, pausing only to scowl at my mismatched folding chairs.
It was the one day a year we all came together, but Roger managed to suck the joy out of it like a human vacuum.
I tried talking to him once, during a community meeting. I suggested a more lenient approach, something that would allow people to, you know, live their lives without fear of a clipboard. Roger, of course, dismissed me outright.
“Julie,” he said, his tone condescending enough to make my teeth clench, “rules exist for a reason. Without them, we’d have chaos.”
I glanced at the other neighbors, who avoided eye contact, clearly unwilling to challenge him.
Fine, I thought. If they wouldn’t stand up to Roger, I wouldn’t either.
Not yet, anyway.
What none of us knew was that Roger wasn’t quite as flawless as he made himself out to be.
Beneath his perfectly manicured lawn and smug expression lay a secret that would soon come back to bite him—literally, in a blaze of poetic justice.
The Flame of Irony
It happened on a Tuesday night, just as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the neighborhood in dusky shades of orange and purple.
I was in my kitchen, loading the dishwasher, when I saw the first flash of light.
For a moment, I thought it was a distant lightning storm.
But then I heard the sirens.
By the time I stepped outside, half the neighborhood was already gathered on the sidewalk, their faces lit by the eerie glow of flickering flames.
Roger’s house was on fire.
The fire trucks roared into the cul-de-sac, their lights splashing red and blue across the scene. As firefighters rushed to contain the blaze, the neighbors whispered among themselves.
“Faulty wiring,” someone murmured. “He was doing it himself, wasn’t he?”
Of course, he was.
Roger had been bragging for weeks about his new lighting system—“custom wiring,” he called it, though we all knew it was just a fancy way of saying “unapproved DIY project.”
Apparently, the very same zeal he used to enforce the HOA rules didn’t extend to following them himself.
The fire was under control within an hour, but the damage was done.
Apparently, the flames ravages the kitchen, but the rest of the house was okay,
Denied by His Own Standards
The next morning, the neighborhood buzzed with speculation about what Roger would do next.
After the fire marshall said that the structure was sound, it was time to make repairs.
But, the smell of smoke was so terrible, Roger couldn’t live there.
Most assumed he’d move into a hotel while sorting out the repairs, but that wasn’t Roger’s style.
Instead, he applied to the HOA for permission to park a temporary trailer on his lot—a violation of the very same rules he’d enforced with militant fervor.
The irony was too delicious.
The HOA board, now led by a fed-up group of neighbors, called an emergency meeting to review his request.
I attended, mostly out of curiosity.
Roger stood at the front of the room, clipboard-less for once, pleading his case.
“It’s a temporary measure,” he said, his voice lacking its usual smugness. “Surely exceptions can be made under these circumstances.”
The board members exchanged glances. One of them, Linda—the same Linda who’d been fined for her garden hose—cleared her throat.
“Roger, you’ve always been a stickler for the rules. And the rules clearly state that temporary structures, including trailers, are prohibited on any lot.”
“But this is different!” Roger spluttered. “I—”
“It’s not,” Linda interrupted, her tone firm but measured. “We all have to follow the guidelines. That’s what you’ve always said, isn’t it?”
The room was silent, save for the faint scratching of pens as the board voted unanimously to deny Roger’s request.
He left the meeting without another word. Furious.
The aftermath was almost too perfect. With no choice but to find housing elsewhere, Roger moved into a rental several miles away, leaving his charred home behind.
Without his constant patrols, the neighborhood began to breathe again. Kids rode their bikes freely, garden gnomes reappeared on lawns, and mismatched flower pots flourished like wildflowers.
A few months later, the HOA convened to revisit the community guidelines.
This time, the meeting was different.
Neighbors spoke openly, proposing reasonable changes to the rules. Fines for minor infractions were reduced, and a “three-strike” policy for noncompliance was introduced.
For the first time in years, it felt like we were a community, not a colony under Roger’s rule..
Roger’s obsession with rules had been his undoing, and the neighborhood was better for it. Poetic justice doesn’t always come with flashing lights and sirens, but when it does, it’s spectacular.
And my flower pots? They’ve never looked better.