Agga-bur-yay yoo-yoo

As of yesterday, Saturday, February 5, 2011, yrs trly is 67 years old.
Born that day in Cooper Hospital, Camden, New Jersey, a 1944 model.
Still short of “old fartdom,” which in my humble opinion is not until I reach 70; and 13 years shy of “geezerdom,” which begins at age-80.
In other words, I am still a “crusty old curmudgeon,” which I became when I attained age-60.
This means I get to crank age-67 into the cardio-machines at the Canandaigua YMCA, instead of age-66.
And I get to tell my friend Michelle, the exercise-coach in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym, it feels like my 67-year-old knees are gonna continue to let me run.
Michelle, probably in her 40s, is unfortunately having problems with her knees.
All I take is a daily fish-oil tablet, 720 mg.
Plus drink lots of water.
I don’t run very fast any more, but I still can.
Sugar is also verboten, e.g. soda-pop.
Same with salt, which I don’t use at all.
We don’t have a salt-shaker.
My younger siblings all noisily insist I’m post-war baby-boom, that Boomers are no-good lazy layabouts.
But 1944 is not post-war.
World War Two was still on.
To me, the post-war baby-boom is about 1946 through 1950 or so.
Actually, the scuttlebutt is clear through 1960, which means my younger brothers, 1957 and 1958, are technically the Boomers they so loudly bad-mouth.
Although I never thought of them as that.
I’ve always felt the post-war baby-boom ended about 1950.
So I’m pre-Boomer, but at the cusp.
In fifth grade (1955) I had to do double-sessions, noon to 5 p.m.
Many large schools were built in anticipation of the post-war baby-boom.
I did high-school in new buildings, although in two different states.
In south Jersey, seventh grade was in a partially finished new high-school building.
In northern Delaware, eighth and part of ninth grades were in a new junior-high building.
The remainder of grade nine, and the higher grades, were in a just-built high-school, which became grades 10-12 after I graduated.
As part of my birthday I got a phonecall from my sister in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
She and I are the oldest, both in our 60s. (I’m the oldest.)
She was born in 1945.
She is also not a Boomer; conceived during the war, and born shortly after it ended.
Every year on her birthday I call her to sing Happy Birthday.
“Agga-bur-yay yoo-yoo, agga-bur-yay yoo-yoo.”
I had a kid brother born in 1954 with Down Syndrome, and that was how he sang it.
He never left home; he was not institutionalized by my parents, the classiest thing they ever did.
Back then people with Down Syndrome were often institutionalized.
But my mother refused.
I was blow-drying my hair after showering:
“Agga-bur-yay yoo-yoo, agga-bur-yay yoo-yoo.”