When you were a kid, nothing quite hit as hard as a bouncy house did.

You knew that tenth birthday party was gonna be fire when you heard that obnoxiously loud air hose slowly filling up the bouncy castle!

And if there was a water slide attached? You might as well have had a fast pass at Disney world, especially if it was on a hot summer day!

But apparently not everyone was a fan of bouncy houses, because when this user’s neighbors set up a giant one for their kids, she ended up calling their neighborhood HOA to shut it down?

Was she in the right, or was she just being a stick in the mud? Decide for yourself!

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

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 jerk.

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.

And when OP brought it up to their neighbors, the neighbors assured them that the bouncy castle wouldn’t be up for much longer….

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 back yard.

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.

But disaster struck when another one of OP’s shift changes meant she was still being kept up by the bouncing…

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 realized that probably hundreds of gallons of water had run under our shared fence.

The water had actually pushed all my dog’s poop up against by back door.

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.”

So completely out of options, OP went got out the big guns: The neighborhood HOA!

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

So I called the HOA however the machine works, my neighbor had been called in front of a board meeting.

He was fined about $1000 dollars for covenant violations as well as being ordered to pay for damages to our joint fence.

And OP said that her friends, of all people, were on her neighbor’s side!

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 in the wrong for going to the HOA.

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

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 busy bodies with too much time and too much undeserved power. AITA?

I guess OP could have invested in some noice-cancelling headphones, but that wouldn’t have fixed the water damage that was done to her backyard and her fence!

And that neighbor gave her no other options by being so blatantly rude to her and disregarding her polite request for sleep!

Reddit as on her side, saying that all of OP’s complaints were completely valid, and her neighbor was nothing but unpleasant to her.

And this user said if the water was going up to her door than it was only a matter of time until it did serious damage to her house.

And while many said they didn’t like snitches, they thought this was a special case!

And just because calling the HOA usually makes you a jerk, it doesn’t ALWAYS make you a jerk!

After the dog poop, I would have went over there with a pin and taken care of that bouncy house myself!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.