When Sanity Is Overruled by Rules

We all have different conceptions of hell.

Some people imagine it is being trapped in an elevator with Pat Buchanan.

Personally, I imagine it is spending eternity in a homeowners’ meeting.

The Community Assns. Institute estimates that 80 million Americans live in “common interest communities,” run by condominium, co-op or homeowner associations.

Which explains a lot about the rise of psychosis in our culture.

Years ago, I lived in a high-rise condo. I went to one meeting. Which was taken up debating a motion as to whether the building should hire a concierge.

“A concierge could get us ballet and concert tickets,” the crazy lady who made the motion said.

(Every homeowners’ association has at least one crazy lady. For all I know it is the same crazy lady who keeps moving.)

I raised my hand. I took the floor. I tried to imagine how Winston Churchill would choose his words.

Whazza matter, you don’t own a telephone? I shouted at the crazy lady. Both your arms broken or something? You can’t dial a phone and get your own lousy concert tickets?

The debate lasted more than three hours. The final vote was 26-2 against hiring a concierge. I felt so ashamed of my behavior that I voted with the crazy lady.

But I vowed that I would never live in a condo again. So now I live in a house. But that house is part of a homeowners’ association.

Which means I have a homeowners’ manual that weighs more than a Sunday newspaper.

This is common in America. I read not long ago about a place called Virginia Run, a planned community near Centreville, Va., which has a book of regulations that tells people how high they may stack their firewood (four feet), where they may string their back-yard clotheslines (nowhere; back-yard clotheslines are forbidden), whether they may keep Christmas lights up beyond the Christmas season (no way) and whether they may have satellite dishes in their yards (Are you kidding me? Not even the crazy lady would try that one).

I would quote the rules from my own homeowners’ manual, but I lost it. Which, by the way, is a violation of the homeowners’ manual.

Recently, my association held its annual meeting. There are 753 families living in my community. About 60 people showed up at the meeting. The rest decided to stay home and be sane.

I kept silent for the first item on the agenda: whether we should plant annuals or perennials in the common areas.

“You only have to plant perennials once, while annuals, you have to plant, uh, annually,” said one homeowner, who was following the rule that when something is too obvious to state it should be stated immediately.

“Is that an annual calendar year?” another person asked. “Or an annual fiscal year?”

I can’t tell you how the vote went. I was too busy trying to retrieve my eyeballs, which had rolled up into my head.

At the second agenda item, however, I perked up. It was marked: “deer problem.”

Though I live only 13 miles west of the White House, there are tons of deer where I live. And I have a city boy’s affection for them. Where I grew up, deer meant Bambi and not dinner.

As communities grow and grow, deer end up living closer and closer to people. It is not the deer’s fault. They are staying put and we are pressing in on them.

And the deer, who are not issued homeowners’ manuals, do not know they are forbidden to eat the azaleas and other plants that people stick in their yards.

“The deer are eating the shrubs around the electrical transformer boxes!” a lady complained.

I move we do away with the electrical transformer boxes, I said. Problem solved. Let’s adjourn.

“Is there a second to the motion?” the chairman asked.

There was no second. Apparently some people like electricity more than deer.

“They have eaten all my shrubs,” a man said. “I put out mothballs in bags of cheesecloth to keep them away, but that has not worked.”

But I’ll bet you don’t have moths! I shouted. Count your blessings!

“You should try garlic,” another person suggested.

I was going to stand up and say that this would work only if the deer happened to be vampires, but I decided to hold my tongue.

The debate lasted for what seemed like several weeks. Some people wanted to shoot the deer. But in the end, reason prevailed.

Let’s not harm the deer, I said. Instead, I move we use scarecrows to scare them away.

“But will that really work?” a homeowner asked.

It will if we make the scarecrows look like Pat Buchanan, I said.

The motion passed unanimously.