-{ redgeek.net }-

Normally, my roommate attends our HOA meetings as I’m typically in my martial arts class at that hour. Due to an hotly contested assessment that’s coming up, and my roommates schedule not allowing him to be there, I attended in his stead.

Oh. My. Fucking. Lord.

I felt like I was in grade school again, although all my classmates were over sixty. There were very few of the younger owners present, of which are quite a few, and I can understand why. The centerpiece of most of these peoples lives appear to revolve around insignificant conflicts with neighbors: who have the lights over their garages at the wrong angle, those who parked their car in their driveway or a guest spot without the right color permit, all sorts of nonsense. And these people were incensed. Positively livid. There were three or four coronaries simmering, I’m suprised nobody collapsed on the spot.

After an extended diatribe on her neighbor’s poor parking habits, finger wagging throughout, the loud lady in the back was asked a simple question by the HOA director, one of the few voices of reason: Have you talked with your neighbor about this?

“Oh no!” she explodes, heaving her three hundred pounds off her bench to wag even more vigorously at some invisible neighbor, “Oh no, she’s impossible, she’s unfriendly, I’ve had issues with her since I moved in, and her son, oh! Her son’s on drugs, there’s no telling what he’ll do, it’s an impossible situation, she just needs to have her car towed!”

Yeah, that’ll fix it.

And then there were the gossipy old ladies camping out in the back, who never added anything to any of the discussions, but would lean in to their friend to “whisper” in condescending tones loud enough for everyone to hear, “She’s wrong, wrong, wrong, you know that,” “As if my rates aren’t high enough already,” “Yeah, right, like that will happen.” Ad nauseum.

Stand up or shut up.

At one point to two real estate lawyers get into it:

“Have you heard of the [such and such] act that prohibits HOA’s from doing this sort of thing?”

“Yeah, I’m just waiting to see you bring a lawsuit buddy.”

“I will.”

“So do.”

“I am. Just wait.”

“You know how far you’ll get with that? Not even to first base, mister, and I’m going to laugh.”

“You’ll see.”

“Yeah, I’ll see.”

No, my dad can beat up your dad.

At one point they asked for volunteers to count the ballots on the assessment. For all their vim and vigor, they don’t fucking volunteer to do anything. So I step up and become the tally validator, signing off the results, and have to forcefully call for quiet (nearly prefacing with “children, children”) in order to hear what the board is saying to me.

Duties complete, I retire to the back of the room and catch the eye of another owner, slightly older than myself but not by much. We look at each other and smile, her eyes rolling: can you believe these people?

If only everyone walked in to the meeting asking themselves, “What can I contribute?” or “Why am I here?” it would make everything much more pleasant and take half the time. We’d be in, discuss, vote, out, done. If you stop and ask yourself why you’re bitching just before you do, you’ll find that most of the time you actually don’t want to. You have some other point to make that the complaining is merely symptomatic of, a point that can be made more effectively by intelligent, productive conversation.

I’d think that after enough years, this group of people would realize such a thing. Perhaps, if you’re life is boring enough and you can’t be motivated to get out and do something, or stay in and read or watch a movie, you require such inconsequential drama in your life. If that’s the case, that’s sad, but it’s a prison of their own creation.

Did I momentarily connect with the young lady because we’re about the same age? Or is it that we realize there are much more important things in life, like love, work, play, friends – interpersonal communication skills – school, art, a myriad of other things? Did these pre-boomers grow up in such isolated environments that they never learned how to stop, take a breath, and give someone the benefit of the doubt? Did they forget?

Inside and outside of my extended family, I know many of the same approximate age that are not nearly so petulant or small-minded, so I’m not inclined to make the generalization, but the forty-five minute scene was astounding, shattering any illusions of sage old men and women. I guess you don’t have to be an angsty goth teen to be bitter, mean, two-bit drama-whore. Character, or lack therof, holds no prejudices.

I’d like to think that I’ll never reach that stage – I guess we’ll see in another thirty or forty years – but who knows, perhaps I’ll end up coming full circle, arguing about diapers and unwilling to share my crayons.