boomerag

Ever think about that word, *boomer* ? The word transmits a feeling forceful expansion - all muscle and sweat and bigness. It has heft. You pucker your lips, open your mouth to form a perfect O, and with the authority of an orator, push the sound out over your tongue. When I say it, I always emphasize the BOOM, with the er a mere ornament, a grace note enhancing the central note.

The word itself is fun to follow. Check out the entry in Wikipedia. Historically, a boomer was a tradesperson in certain American industries like oil or construction. These gave rise to spinoff terms like boom-up (to change jobs, usually with better pay) and boomtown. Today, we nickname serious atheletes Boomer (think football quarterbacks and baseball pitchers). The military can't ever be left out of the fun, so to submariners, a vessel that carries ballistic missiles is a boomer. Then you have your garden variety boomer mushroom, an Australian leaping boomer (aka kangaroo), a mountain beaver boomer, a cartoon strip character boomer, and even a robot boomer.

But my favorite boomernomer happens to be an American demographic category. Soldiers returning home from overseas after World War II (how many bloggers remember that war?) were largely responsible for a giant spike in the nation's head count between 1946 and 1964. The baby boomer generation - really, a generation plus - effectively messed with the conservative (read constrictive) cultural norms of the period. But you knew that.

Why boomernomer drivel as my first posting? Maybe that question will be answered by any blogsniffers willing to deconstruct the whimsical.