Nobody likes a snitch. Or the HOA.

But in this story, one person makes a pretty compelling case in favor of both.

Let’s see if this tattletale gets a fairy tale ending.

AITA for calling the HOA on the neighbors for installing a 25 foot tall bouncy castle/water slide in their backyard?

I never thought I would be in this position but I am the one who sought out the 75 year old members of the HOA board for assistance.

Having said that, I feel like I was very patient and accommodating but just got pushed too far.

But still anytime you “call the HOA” you might be the AH.

At least they are self-aware. Let’s see if they’re the AH or NAH.

My neighbors started out in February/March with a bouncy castle in their yard.

I could not see it but I could certainly hear it when the kids would start bouncing at 4:30/5 am.

It honestly seemed that the kids would wake up really early and the parents would send them outside so they could sleep.

But it was incredibly loud.

Alright, pretty rude. Will they change their ways?

I had a polite conversation with the parents and they assured me the bouncy castle was temporary.

I put up with it for probably 3 weeks, nearly every day until I explained that I work nights and I was being woken up right as I was getting to sleep.

To their credit, they stopped jumping early in the morning and everything was fine until 3 weeks ago when a huge bouncy castle suddenly appeared in their backyard.

Magic castle, more like tragic castle…

It was at least 25 feet tall… it completely blocked my view of the mountains I could see the kids were able to look right into my bedroom window from the top.

Do these neighbors really think that’s cool behavior?

Unfortunately this coincided with a shift change for me and now the kids were up until 11-12, even 1am on some nights and now I had to wake up at 4:30.

I didn’t even realize it was also a waterslide until I noticed that probably hundreds of gallons of water had run under our shared fence and actually pushed all my dog’s poop up against my back door.

That’s some gross runoff. How will they handle this?

I went over and talked to them and the dad essentially said, “We were polite enough to change our schedule for you the first time and this is our backyard–screw you.”

I decided something had to be done because potentially my house could be damaged, let alone the sleep issue.

So I called the HOA and however the machine works, my neighbor had been called in front of a board meeting, fined about $1000 dollars for covenant violations as well as been ordered to pay for damages to our joint fence.

Justice is served but at what cost?

I thought everything was good except for some dirty looks from the neighbor but literally EVERY one of my family and friends are saying I’m the AH for going to the HOA.

While opinions vary, the general gist is I’m now the crabby neighbor ruining kids’ fun.

Sometimes even crabs are right.

That I should have got some noise cancelling headphones and ignored it and they would have popped the slide at some point anyways and it would have taken care of itself.

The idea I guess is that I tattled and got my way by unleashing a bunch of busybodies with too much time and too much undeserved power.

AITA?

I would say I can see both sides here, but a giant bouncy castle is blocking my view…

What do the comments say?

One person says, nope, this is a waterslide too far.

Another poster enumerates the ways in which these neighbors are wrong.

Somebody else says, HOAs are a necessary evil sometimes.

This person says, who ya gonna call?

This poster is like, they’re lucky they didn’t call any bigger guns.

Does anybody live happily ever after in this bouncy castle?

Apparently not.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.