Micromanaging Nature
I was showing my six-year-old stepdaughter how to skip rocks in the pond. An HOA board member screeched to a halt in his truck and yelled at her to stop doing that.
I yelled back at him, saying I’ll buy more rocks for the community if it’s such a big deal, but his reasoning was that I was unsettling the structure of the pond.
Apparently to him, small, thin rocks mixed in with the large boulders were preventing erosion. He then backpedaled a bit and said teenagers from other communities were messing with the pond and he didn’t realize the situation. He told us to just leave the big rocks alone.
It upset my stepdaughter, who didn’t want to skip rocks after the brief encounter. But there was an upshot to all this.
I told a guy at work this story, who just happened to also be on the HOA board with the same man at a sister community across town.
The two got into a shouting match at a meeting over rock skipping. There were many other annoying incidents and I’ve moved since. Never again.