My friends and I are at a local lake park. It is fully fenced and you need a key to get in. The key is given out by the homeowners’ group and you have to live there to have one. The park is maintained 100% by a fee taken by the HOA. The fence is ten feet tall and topped with razor wire; these richies really take their muddy lake park seriously.

The park is about sixty by two hundred feet, with a little beach on a small rural lake. The park “belongs” to probably thirty or forty different homes. We are the only people in the park.

There are six of us and we are sitting at a table about a hundred feet into the park, away from the fence, eating and working on DnD sheets, when we hear screaming. I am the “speaker” for my group of friends — we are all about twenty, and they are art/stem students and I am a 6’9″ security guard — so I go up to this middle-aged couple.

When they see only I am coming, they start FREAKING OUT. The man is standing with fists at his side screaming, and the woman is doing this weird dance, making gesturing motions and using the “threatening white lady singsong” voice.

The rest of the group follows but stays back twenty feet.

Karen: *Clapping her hands and smiling* “Okay, time to go! Come on! Go, GO, GO!”

Me: “Is there a problem?”

Karen: *Smiling bright* “You know you can’t be here! You know that!” *Big smile and clap* “Time to go!”

Me: “We can be here. She—” *points to my girlfriend* “—lives here, and we have the key.” *Shows the key*

We have the locked gate to the park right between us and they aren’t making any attempt to come in.

Karen: “Where did you get that?! Doesn’t matter! Let’s go!” *Clapping* “Can’t have you here; you know you can’t be here! My kids play here; we can’t have that!” *Smiles*

Me: “No. We can be here. We aren’t leaving.”

Karen: *Face immediately falls* “Don’t talk to me that way. Get out now. NOW, NOW, NOW!” *Clapping but no longer smiling*

Me: “No. We are here in the middle of the day, not causing problems. We have a key and ID showing we can be here. Do you have a key?”

Karen: “I don’t need a key to tell you to leave! I’m telling you to go! NOW!”

She keeps clapping rapidly at the group behind me and making “come here” gestures with both hands.

The husband appears to be attempting to play “bad cop,” arms crossed over a puffed chest, chin up, watching me through sunglasses.

I speak to my longtime girlfriend, who is the resident here.

Me: “Hey, honey. You allowed here? You want to stay?”

She nods without saying anything to this. Karen’s eyes go to her and narrow. Sadly, this is where things go bad.

Karen: “Oh, really, you live here? You sure about that? You sure you’re allowed here?”

Her smile comes back wider than ever and she pulls out her phone with 911 pre-dialed and shows us.

Karen: “Want to explain it to the police, honey?” *Big smile and direct eye contact*

This is 2005 or ‘06 in a rather rich white neighborhood, and my girlfriend is obviously Middle Eastern. She backs down immediately because, to her, truth doesn’t help here. These people don’t appear to even live in the neighborhood, but she’s sure the cops would take their side anyway.

So, Karen is wiggling her phone at us and waggling her eyebrows. I really, REALLY want to push back on this, because I feel like I could handle the police. Police interaction is part of my daily job as security, and at that age, I foolishly think it would matter. But my friends are really freaked out about the police, so we pack up while the couple stands there smiling, clapping, and sometimes calling out, “Hurry up!”

They wait until we leave and start following us back to my girlfriend’s house. The lady’s phone is out and still pre-dialed. I vividly remember her holding the phone in front of her, displaying it to us whenever we look back at them, with her thumb hovering over the call button the whole way back.

Karen: “Aw, you’re good kids. Thanks for doing the right thing. You’ll understand someday why you need to keep your neighborhood safe! Thanks for listening to us!”

They repeated similar things the whole way back. Then, they stood at the bottom of the driveway and stared us down until we went in the front door and then they both smiled and waved. The husband then took out a small camera and took photos of the house and mailbox, and individual pictures of the license plates for the four cars in the driveway.