SIX FINGERED BLOW

How Wet Is Your Whistle?

The lost art of whistling for a cab, cavemen and construction sites

I’ve never enjoyed getting whistled at. Not even on days I feel like a hideous troll. I appreciate how low the bar is for getting whistled at but I don’t enjoy the gesture. It’s alarming. It’s like a jump scare. Jesus. Where did that come from type of shit.

In the stone age, there was only one guy who could whistle. He practiced all day. One fortuitous day, a single cave woman passed his man cave. He was so excited his whistle came out louder than intended — embarrassing but effective.

The single lady turned left into his cave. The rest is whistletory. Long story short. His family went into construction.

I feel sorry for dogs when it comes to whistles. Especially those passive-aggressive silent dog whistles created in some James Bond evil anti-canine gadget laboratory.

Who buys those? Some cartoon villain wannabe who watches Lady and the Tramp in order to calm down about the state of the government? What kind of a poop bag needs to blow into a silent whistle to prove dogs hear different decibels than humans?

Those poor pups. They’re like ruff the fuck up. Where is that ruffing whistle coming from? Could someone please ruffing turn that shit off?

Maybe I’m overidentifying and anthropomorphizing dogs, but what if it is torture and they have no way of telling us?

What’s that Fido? You’re hungry? You see mailman? Amazon is here with a package? Good boy.

No, you human moronic plague. It’s that goddamn silent whistle. Can we drive around the neighborhood, see who's blowing into that thing, and bite their face off?

What if dogs also feel objectified by the whistle the same way I feel overly sexualized whenever I pass a construction site?

“Jesus!” Fido barks to Nachos. “Don’t ever go down 63rd street. It’s whistle whistle whistle. It makes me feel like a whore. I‘m wearing a cone over my head the next time I walk down that street.”

“Don’t bother with the cone,” Nachos barks back to Fido. “I tried it and those fuckers still whistled. So humanoginistic. Don’t they know we’re more than fluffy and tails?”

Knowing how I feel about whistling, you can imagine my horror when I attended a swim meet and the whistlers had infiltrated the swimming pool bleachers.

Whistling from a construction site is one thing, but the Petrie dish of sound created in an indoor setting is like a million little gremlins setting off poppers in your ear canals.

The humidity of swim meets makes whistling louder. You could produce an album in there. The sound would be magnificent if I were listening to Lizzo or Beyoncé perform. But not whistlers. Not those fuckers.

Do you know how many types of whistlers there are? They are all represented at the bigger swim meets. They’re like those cheerleading squads that are multiplying all over the nation. Where did all these people with these particular skill sets come from? Are we breeding them?

Is there a little town in Indiana where cheerleading squads and whistlers are holed up and trained like Russian gymnasts?

I understand the struggle of the swim parents. Because our children are submerged under water when they are competing, we only have one moment when they come up for air when we can cheer for them.

Why does our cheering matter? Because we drove all this way, hours, sometimes days to sit in these fart humid bleachers. We used to be people with dreams and goals and we require a role. Whistling becomes some of our raison d’êtres.

If you hear a pucker whistle, Chad, that’s me.

Ashley, I’m going to be cheering you on with the three-fingered whistle.

Jayden, Daddy’s going to be performing the roof whistle. If you hear that when you’re swimming the 200 IM, that’s me kid.

When I think of whistling, I think about movies that take place in New York. People are always whistling for cabs. There’s a lot of ego involved in whistling louder than a city. These people who once whistled at cabs are lost now. They are nobody. Their talent is wasted in the era of L’Uber.

In the era of L’Uber, you gotta go to a kid’s swim meet to exhibit your gift. That’s where whistlers go to shine and my tinnitus acts up.

Do you remember that sexy famous line spoken by the unforgettable Lauren Bacall to the weirdest sex symbol in history Humphrey Bogart?

“You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and… blow.”

For all of you four-fingered, taxi-cab yearning, hand whistling, roof whistling, swim parents out there? I don’t think Lauren Bacall meant for y’all to whistle so damn loud. Take it down a notch.

Thanks to Gary Chapin for his most excellent editing.

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