Remembering Paula

My loathing of homeowners’ associations is well documented.  I have mostly found them to be full of sniveling, pathetic, power-hungry worms who, unable to obtain authority in their personal relationships or on their jobs, have chosen to inflict their petty wills upon their cowering neighbors on such weighty issues as window treatments and whether Mr. Anderson puts his garbage cans up in a timely manner.

But if you’re in a homeowners’ association and enjoy it, then I’m sure I don’t mean you.

Yeah.  So.

Lea and I built a house in a reasonably nice, but thoroughly unassuming, neighborhood in 2000.  It seems that most of the time a tony address comes with a homeowners’ association, which is a virtual guarantee that I’ll never have one.  (Well, I’ll have to belong to one if we ever have a Gulf condo, I suppose, but I’m talking about regular old houses.)

We did get to experience a little taste of the joy, though.  Right after we moved in, my father-in-law and I were digging post holes in the backyard, when the “Community Watch Commander” came a-callin’.  She was a 50ish, overweight-but-reasonably-attractive woman with a straw hat and a clipboard.  I’ll call her Paula.

She introduced herself, and then proceeded to ask about as many questions as the last census taker with whom I interacted, carefully recording my answers all the while.  I think when she got to “aspirations” or something similarly ridiculous, I ignored it and asked her about her.  She gave me a brief pat answer, and then asked me why I was enclosing the space under our deck.

Do you have a good feel for the kind of person this is?  Are you getting the vibe?  You ever watch pro tennis?

I was building a place to put the dogs up at night, and told her so.  Lea mused later that we should have told her we were going to raise chickens under there.

Paula, finally relenting, signed us up for a Community Watch driving stint and left.

So a couple of weeks go by, and I’m paying bills.  I need to know something from the good Discover Card people, so I went to call them, and accidentally hit the one-touch 911 button.  I hung it up immediately (ha!).

After dialing the correct number, I’m seven or eight steps deep into the voicemail system, and the Call Waiting beeps.  Not wishing to surrender my progress, I ignore it (ha!).

Five minutes later, the doorbell rings.  I don’t think anything of it (ha!).

So Lea, who is obviously mystified, calls me to the door, where I explain to the deputy from the Limestone County Sheriff’s office that yes, it was I who placed the 911 call, and I thought I hung it up in time, and I’m sorry, officer.  He said no problem, have a nice day, and left.  (I think he even tipped his hat.  I love Alabama.)

Now there aren’t many reasons why a police cruiser shows up in a residential driveway.  Appreciating that, I told Lea half-jokingly that it’d be a good idea for her to leave the house with a big smile, and without sunglasses, on her face for the next few days.  Something sleeveless would be good, too.

It didn’t take Paula long at all to “innocently” inquire of Lea whether “your husband works for the Sheriff’s Department?  Because I saw a car…”

Paula moved to Florida a few years ago, where I’m sure she rules with a smile and an iron fist.

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