That’s not our car. Never has been. But for four weeks straight, it’s been halfway on our lawn, tires turned like it owns the place.

It belongs to Ms. Rulene Yao, who lives two doors down and insists the “city’s lines are wrong.” She says she’s “asserting her easement rights,” which is rich coming from someone who once reported us for having “too many” solar lights.

My dad left printed notes. My mom called parking enforcement—three times. The second time, Rulene came to our door holding her phone like a badge, yelling, “Any damage to my undercarriage will be considered vandalism.”

One afternoon I watched her back into that crooked spot, door still open, one foot dragging on the pavement. She had opera music blasting. Not even the good kind—some YouTube karaoke version with ads in between.

Then came the real kicker: one rainy night, she slipped on our curb while stepping out, dropped her Tupperware (it exploded all over our grass), and the next morning, we got a legal-looking envelope on our welcome mat.

Inside was a letter—signed in blue glitter pen—claiming “emotional distress, property loss, and bruised tailbone” from our “poorly maintained incline.”

That was a Tuesday.

On Friday morning, she showed up in a neck brace and called the HOA president over. And right when my dad came out to ask her—politely—to move the car just two feet, she turned around, raised her phone, and said, “Don’t come any closer, sir. I’m documenting everything.”

Dad stood there, soaked from head to toe, mug of coffee in one hand and his eyebrows raised like he’d stepped into an off-Broadway production. “You’re parked on our grass again, ma’am,” he said.

She didn’t even blink. “This whole strip is public easement,” she barked, “and you people are lucky I’m not suing for harassment.”

You people. That stuck with me.

The HOA president, Mr. Caffrey, shifted uncomfortably beside her. He’s a short man, mid-seventies, wears socks with sandals and always smells faintly of eucalyptus. “Now, now,” he said, “let’s just keep things neighborly.”

That Saturday, my mom caught her taking pictures of our house from across the street. Not just a few snaps—she had a clipboard, a measuring tape, and even a bubble level. My mom asked her what she was doing, and she replied, “Gathering evidence for my lawyer.”

We didn’t do anything. Not yet.

Instead, my brother Ollie started a spreadsheet. Every time she parked, every inch she crossed the property line, every instance of her playing opera covers at max volume before 7 a.m.—he logged it.

He even installed one of those cheap driveway cameras pointed right at the spot. Nothing illegal, just enough to give us proof she was on our lawn.

Meanwhile, the car—a faded silver Ford Focus—was starting to leave deep tire grooves on the grass. One tire always rested on the same patch, and by week four, that spot was basically a mud trench.

Dad wanted to reseed it, but Mom said, “Let’s wait. I want her to see what she’s doing.”

Then came the letter from her “lawyer,” which looked suspiciously like it had been printed at the local library. It had Comic Sans headings and several misspelled words, like “negligance” and “trama.” It accused us of “ongoing psychological damage” and “failure to maintain public property,” citing “curb aggression.”

Dad read it out loud at the dinner table. Ollie laughed so hard he nearly dropped his fork.

“I don’t think a real lawyer ends their letters with ‘This is your final warning before escalation. Sincerely and With Regret, Ms. R. Yao, Esq. in Spirit.’” he said.

Still, Dad sent it over to a real lawyer just in case. And surprise—it wasn’t filed officially. There was no court claim, no records. It was all hot air.

Then, right when things were settling into a sort of weird routine, Rulene escalated again.

She had our lawn marked with little plastic flags—blue and yellow ones, like a utility crew had come through. We didn’t know who put them there, so Dad called the city. They said they hadn’t sent anyone.

Two days later, a tow truck showed up. Not for her car—oh no. She tried to have my mom’s car towed for “blocking access to a designated easement route.”

The tow guy took one look at the situation and drove off, muttering, “Not getting involved in this circus.”

By now, neighbors were talking. Mrs. Dunphy from across the street left us a Bundt cake with a note that said, “Heard about the opera queen. Stay strong.”

But the real twist came when my cousin Drew—who works in county records—offered to do some digging. He owed my mom a favor after she helped him redo his resume last winter.

And what he found? That’s when everything turned.

Turns out, Rulene didn’t own her house. She was renting it. Worse—she was illegally subletting part of it to someone else, which directly violated the HOA rules she was always quoting at us.

Not only that, but the property lines had been resurveyed just last year, and our curb? 100% ours. No easement, no public path, no right of way. Just our property.

Armed with this, Dad went to the HOA board meeting and presented everything. The photos, the logs, the fake letter, the city responses, and the county records.

The room went quiet when he said, “We’ve tried kindness. We’ve tried patience. But it’s time this stops.”

Rulene wasn’t there, but word spread like wildfire. Within a week, the HOA sent her a formal cease-and-desist letter. She was ordered to stop parking across our driveway or face a daily fine and potential eviction if she kept violating subletting terms.

And just like that, she disappeared for a few days.

No opera. No car. No clipboard.

When she returned, she parked properly in front of her own house. No more tire marks on our grass. No more legal letters in Comic Sans.

We thought it was over.

But then, one morning, I saw her out there—not yelling, not measuring, but pulling weeds on our curb.

I stepped outside, still groggy from sleep, and asked, “You okay?”

She looked up. The neck brace was gone. Her hair was in a braid, and she looked… smaller, somehow. “It’s cleaner when I’m not mad,” she said quietly.

It caught me off guard. I didn’t know what to say.

“I got served an eviction notice,” she added after a beat. “Not because of you. My landlord found out about the sublet. My niece and her baby are staying with me, and I didn’t want them to be out on the street.”

There it was. The twist I didn’t expect.

“I thought if I got you to move your car, if I could claim a little extra space, maybe they’d have room,” she muttered, voice thin like paper. “But I made it worse.”

I told my mom later, and she didn’t say much—just nodded slowly and stared out the window.

The next day, we didn’t call the city when the Ford was back on our side, just for an hour while someone loaded a car seat into it. The baby had the softest little beanie.

Two weeks later, she was gone for good. The house was empty. A “For Rent” sign went up, and a new couple moved in with two rescue greyhounds and a vegetable garden.

We never saw Rulene again.

But sometimes, when it rains and the grass gets slick, I remember her slipping on the curb, Tupperware flying, opera music still playing from the car.

And I think about how sometimes people don’t just want space. They need it. They don’t always know how to ask.

There’s no excuse for what she did, not really. But I also know now that her fight wasn’t about us. It was about trying not to lose something she didn’t know how to hold on to.

In the end, we got our grass back. But maybe more than that, we got a lesson in how not every battle is what it seems.

If you enjoyed this story, give it a like and share it with someone who’s had a wild neighbor story of their own. You never know what’s going on just two doors down.