Nope!

Last night (Thursday, February 5, 2009; my 65th birthday), my sister Betty called from Fort Lauderdale.
It’s the old waazoo we do to each other: sing “agga-bur-yay” for each other.
I should explain for possible readers of this here blog.
I had a mentally-retarded kid-brother (Down Syndrome) who lived at home, and on people’s birthdays he would sing “Agga-bur-yay-yoo-yoo; agga-bur-yay-yoo-yoo. Agga-bur-yay. Agga-bur-yay. Agga-bur-yay-yooooo-yoooooooo.” (He died at 15 in 1969.) —My parents not putting him in an institution was the classiest thing they ever did.
So every year, despite my sister and I being on entirely different wave-lengths, my sister and I call each other up for the birthday serenade.
My sister and I are part of what I call the first wave. We were the first-borns; born in the ‘40s (I’m the oldest, but only by about a year-and-a-half).
Those in the second wave were born in 1949 and 1954. Both are dead.
The third wave are thems born in the late ‘50s; my baby-sister in late 1961.
So after her serenade, a bit of yammering.
“How’s Scarlett?” she asked.
“Well, better I guess.”
“How’d she get sick?”
“Probably ate something at the golf-course I take her to.”
“They probably sprayed the grass, and she ate that.”
“Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa!” I said. “That golf-course is entirely under a two-foot deep layer of snow. This ain’t Floridy. We won’t see grass until May.”
At about this point I could have weighed in with the old “Hell-oooo;” SCRATCH-CLICK; “Hell-oooo;” SCRATCH-CLICK; “Hell-oooo;” SCRATCH-CLICK; “Hell-oooo;” SCRATCH-CLICK.
But I ain’t like that. I don’t need to prove my ultimate superiority to all-and-sundry.
Why shouldn’t she think that? She lives in south Floridy — she never sees snow. She thinks 53° is cold (our temperature is about 5 above).
“I don’t have clothes for that cold,” she said.

RE: “Both are dead.........” —My brother Tommy born in 1949 died of leukemia in early 1953. The other (Timmy) is my brother with Down Syndrome, born in 1954. He died in 1969. The other siblings are my brother Jack in Boston born in 1957, my brother Bill in northern Delaware born in late ‘58, and my baby-sister Peggy born in December of 1961.

“Scarlett” is our current dog; a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s three-plus, and is our sixth Irish-Setter. She recently had an upset stomach and diarrhea.

RE: “I could have weighed in with the old ‘Hell-oooo;’ SCRATCH-CLICK; ‘Hell-oooo;’ SCRATCH-CLICK; ‘Hell-oooo;’ SCRATCH-CLICK; ‘Hell-oooo;’ SCRATCH-CLICK.......” —My all-knowing, blowhard brother-from-Boston, the macho ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, uses “Hell-oooo” to indicate my supposed stupidity (relative to him), so much it’s like a broken record. This explains “I don’t need to prove my ultimate superiority to all-and-sundry.”