“Gramma do you have navers?”

This is the question my then four-year-old grandson asked me one day.

I stopped and wondered what in the world a “naver” was.   If I had one where would it be?  Was  I wearing it?  Was it in the cabinets?

Then he went on to explain “We have navers, so I have to be really quiet so I don’t bother them.”

Oh! Neighbors.

I made sure to write this precious moment down in my memories book and have used the word “naver” to describe the people living around me ever since.

Living in a “naverhood” is something I’ve never been fond of but something we have always done.   For years, we chose homes in a particular place for the right school, or because there were kids living there.

We’ve been in this naverhood for almost 16 years.   This move was supposed to have been a short-term stay and has turned into the longest we’ve lived anywhere in the 42 years we’ve been together.   Had I known our life circumstances would change we would have bought some acreage.

We are not the most social people. We like privacy.  We like open space. We have three dogs.   Dave and I spend half our time making sure those dogs don’t bark when they are outside.  We never let them bark.  One bark and we’re out there to bring them in.  We try to be good navers in that respect.

Some navers, on the other hand, have peccadillos of their own.  A few weeks ago we had our landscapers do the fall clean up.   We always wait until all the leaves are off the trees to have this done.  After work, I put the dogs out.   I heard Dallas bark, so I went out to call him in.     I heard loud arguing from somewhere over the fence which made Dallas bark again ( he is a dog, of course, he barked) and then I heard a booming voice yell:

“DAMNBARKINGDOGSHUTTHEEXPLETIVEUP”

Uh oh.  Someone had just yelled at the only “kids” I have left in the house for doing something they were causing with their loud voices.    I felt my anger rise, pushed it back down and went to the fence ( our large back yard is completely fenced with a six-foot-tall privacy fence) to find out what the problem was.

I couldn’t see at this point but was told that our landscapers (who, by the way,  are also their landscapers) had blown our leaves into their yard (remember the six ft fence), and the naver had to clean them up.   At that point, I opened the gate to look…

What I saw was a fork full of leaves.   I could have counted them without going to triple digits, and I’m fairly certain those came from the trees on the back of both properties ( because of the SIX FOOT FENCE and the fact that we live in a heavily wooded naverhood).

Sigh.

If we lived on forty acres ( or even five ), nobody would care if leaves blew.  Nobody would care if my dog barked one bark.  Nobody would care that I feed the birds, and the birds sometimes poop on their property ( seriously…I have asked the birds over and over to please poop here).

The older I get, the more I realize that I don’t have time or patience to do the naver dance.

Someday soon I’m  going to get those forty acres and put the BBoW on it.   Then I’ll buy that jackass.

You know, just in case I need a reminder of naverhood living…

Post Script:

My next Grammarly ( the grammar check program I use)  report will tell me the word “naver” is not in the dictionary.    I nearly shut down their program with the use of the word.   It wanted me to use the words “never”, “navel”, “savers” and “movers”.   It is telling me I have 13 critical errors on this post.

Uh huh.  Another grammar riot.