Our neighbor stuck a note on our car: “One car per house!” We ignored it. But three days later, we woke up to our cars being towed. We ran outside—and there she was, grinning wide. “Wow! You really did it, huh?” I said. She snapped back, “What’s so funny?!” I replied calmly, “Nothing. Just the fact that YOU OWE US $25,000 NOW.” Her nervous gulp and confused stare said it all as she demanded to know what I meant.

I pointed to the special tag on the towed car and chuckled. That mark indicated it belonged to a classic registered vehicle in a long-standing neighborhood agreement she had unknowingly violated by calling for the tow. Years earlier, her family had borrowed heavily against a shared property line dispute that was settled in our favor with a legal judgment she had ignored for months. The $25,000 was the accumulated amount plus interest from the court-ordered repayment she had repeatedly dodged while acting superior about parking rules.