Imagine being a teenager and living in a neighborhood that is part of an HOA. Would you be bothered by the picky HOA rules, or would you simply comply because really, it’s up to your parents to follow the rules?

In this story, one teen is really annoyed by the HOA rules, especially the rules about the swimming pool, so he decides to get revenge in the middle of the night.

Keep reading for all the details.

HOA Revenge

My family and I used to live in a fairly upper-middle class neighborhood that had an HOA. The HOA seemed pretty mellow and dedicated to their original purpose and intent: maintaining property values.

As these things usually happen, a few new people got voted in, things started getting a bit more OCD and militant.

Here are a few examples:

These are really picky reasons to fine someone.

We had to throw away our basketball hoop because the backboard was opaque and the new requirement was glass backboards only.

We got a ticket because my dad forgot Monday was memorial day and put the trash out. Of course, trash collection had been pushed back to Tuesday, so we got a fine for having the trash can out over night.

We went on vacation for a week and the grass got a bit longer than usual, but nothing unreasonable. Got threatening letters and a fine.

We weren’t allowed to have cars parked on the street, for any reason.

But one thing annoyed him more than anything else.

My biggest pet peeve was that anyone under 18 had to be accompanied to the pool by their parent. My 17 year old self wasn’t too fond of having to get my mom to come bake in the sun any time I wanted to go for a swim. Nor was she.

I was on an Navy JROTC field trip to a Naval base, that I will leave unnamed for Anonymity reasons, and stumbled upon what I still regard to be one of my greatest ideas.

I was in the Navy Exchange (basically Wal-Mart for Navy personnel) looking at some of their surplus stuff when I came across an ejection seat dye marker. These are those very powerful dye markers that are attached to ejection seats so that in the event of a water landing after ejection, the pilot can be found easily, floating in the middle of a huge patch of green-dyed water.

Time for revenge!

So I bought it for $8 (a bargain at any price) and took it home.

One night, after the HOA instituted (unenforceable) 10PM curfew for adolescents under 18, I took a little stroll over to the pool and tossed that bad-larry on in.

Much to my delight (and nervous horror) it worked exactly as designed. The whole pool was neon green in a matter of a minute or two.

Of course, I got the hell out of dodge.

This was REALLY expensive to fix!

The next day, as I drove past on my way home from school, I noticed that the pool was empty, but still looked very very green.

In the ensuing weeks, I came to find out that the pool had to be drained (660,000 gallons of water) and a professional power-washing company had to be brought in to clean the pool basin concrete, which had absorbed the die.

Then the pool had to be refilled and re-treated with all of the relevant chemicals.

All told, I think it cost ~$10,000 to the HOA.

The HOA President really wasn’t a good guy.

Two years later, the HOA President was busted by the IRS and arrested for embezzling $70k worth of HOA funds.

He went to the big house for a couple of years.

And before anyone tears into me for wasting water, this was in the south, not California. We have more water than we want down here.

That was intense! He was lucky they didn’t have security cameras to figure out who did it.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person thinks he went well beyond revenge!

This is a good point.

One person shares another idea for revenge.

He really is lucky he didn’t get caught.

Literally nobody thinks he did the right thing.

The rules exist for good reasons.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.