“You have no right to be here,” I told her. “This is my property, and I’m telling you to leave.” She actually smiled at that. She liked that. She dialed three numbers and put the phone to her ear. She was calling the cops on my kids on Easter. I could hear her side of it. She told the dispatcher that there was a severe ongoing disturbance, and that there were unsupervised children creating a hazard, and that she felt unsafe. She had walked into our yard. We had not even raised our voices at her. My kids were inside crying. And she was telling 911 that she felt unsafe because an eight-year-old found a chocolate egg.
I am not going to lie. In that moment, my stomach dropped, because I genuinely thought she might win. That is the thing about people like her. They do this stuff so confidently that some part of you starts to believe they must know something you do not. She was so sure. She stood in my backyard with her chin up like she was about to be proven right in front of God and everybody, and I stood there thinking the cops were going to show up and somehow side with the woman who thought she was the sheriff of the cul-de-sac. My wife came back out, having gotten the kids settled inside with the television on, and she stood next to me. She had already called the non-emergency line herself, to report Doris for being on our property. So now there were two calls going on about the same address, which I am sure made dispatch’s day.
We waited. Doris waited. The eggs sat there in the grass. Nobody hunted them anymore. It was the most awkward fifteen minutes of my life. The three of us standing in a backyard in total silence, two of us by the back door and Doris planted in the middle of the lawn, refusing to move, all of us waiting for the police to come settle it. When the squad car pulled up out front, Doris practically lit up. She walked back through the side gate, around to the front, to meet them, which I was honestly relieved about, because it got her off my grass. My wife and I followed.
Two officers got out, a younger guy and an older one, and Doris went straight at them, talking fast, phone already up to show them her video. “Officers, I’m the treasurer of the homeowners association here, and I’ve been trying to address a serious disturbance. These people have completely unsupervised children making noise that is affecting the entire neighborhood, and when I tried to address it, the homeowner became aggressive with me.” I want you to understand how confident she was. She told that story like it was the truth, and she had no doubt in the world that these officers were going to nod along and write us a ticket. The older officer let her finish. Then he looked at me and my wife and asked, real simple, “Who lives here?” “We do,” I said. “This is our house. We own it.” He looked back at Doris. “And where do you live?” “Four houses down,” she said. “But as treasurer, I’m responsible for—” “So you don’t live here,” he said. Not a question. A statement. He let it sit there for a second. “And you were in their backyard.” “I was documenting a violation,” Doris said, and you could hear the first little crack in her voice, the first tiny moment where she realized this might not be going the way it always went.