I watched the woman punch in the numbers with the confidence of someone who owned the place. She wasn’t even trying to hide it. Standing at the keypad of my private security gate in broad daylight, she grinned over her shoulder and said to the two kids behind her, “Don’t worry,” Karen said. “It’s totally fine.
” The gate slid open with a familiar beep. And just like that, three strangers walked onto my land like it was some public park. I wasn’t home, but my cameras were. And as I sat there in a cafe across town watching the live footage on my phone, I nearly dropped my latte. That gate wasn’t just a fancy entrance.
It was my personal line of defense from Ho Insanity. And somehow the village queen herself had handed out the code like Halloween candy. I didn’t know her well, but in that moment, I knew one thing for sure. Karen had declared war, and I wasn’t going down quietly. The whole point of building the gate was peace, quiet. I’m a game developer.
I like solitude, controlled chaos on a screen, not chaos outside my front porch. So, when I moved into this suburban HOA run neighborhood last year, I did my due diligence. I got permits, paid extra to upgrade the security system, installed motion triggered lights, laser sensors, even a voice controlled speaker that could play anything from Beethoven to barking dogs.
