Stopping Traffic

Photo: Cowboy (r) and Miss Kitty express their opinion of my new whistling prowess.



In my not-quite-yet old age, I have learned stuff I always wanted to know how to do.
Like whistling. Really loudly. Piercingly. Enough to stop a New York taxi or a child intent on running across a street for ice cream.
The world is divided into the majority who cannot whistle worth spit, and those few who can produce concert quality tunes and/or ear splitting whistles.
I have known how, or at least been able to produce a loud whistle, several times in my life. Always after I browbeat a stranger who knew how until they gave in and taught me everything they knew. For that I am grateful to them all. It is not their fault I didn't retain the knack. Each time I gained the knowledge, I didn't follow up on it, and forgot. Pretty quickly.
Ah hah! You say, someone who isn’t willing to practice. I guess I have to agree, but it’s not like you want to use that whistle willy nilly. (Excuse me while I add willy nilly to my EW, endangered word, list.) I mean, the high screech can scare little kids and really bug some folks. That's my excuse for not preserving what at the time seemed so simple.
Some use an index finger at each side of their lower lip. Some make a circle of their index finger and thumb and insert it in their mouth. Others do other things. What I didn't take the time to learn was how I was producing the sound. I just copy catted (another dandy EW) til I produced a satisfactory blast.
Then one night I was researching an article for the net on how to play high notes on a trumpet. Experimenting with some of the mouth positions, I hissed, as directed, and whoooosh! There it was.
I felt like I had a new toy. Since I’d discovered the technique myself—and had clear memories of losing it so easily—I happily played around with how to produce it, how to make it higher or lower—and especially louder—both with and without fingers. The concept is to create a cavity in front of your lower teeth, arch your tongue and blow air through your bottom teeth. Experiment and find your sweet tweet spot. Now that I know, I can fancy it up with misdirection and fancy unnecessary finger moves.
My cats came to sit and stare at me. They retreated when I got better. They crept closer when I stopped.
Here I am, living in bear(and cougar and coyote)country, where a really shrill whistle could literally save my life.
I plan to keep practicing. I know the key so the door should open whenever I want it to.
I also know how to tie a shoelace three different ways.
You might want to know why I would want to know this.
The answer is because when I learned there was a way to tie your shoe other than the old standby granny knot, I wanted to learn it immediately. At least, that's the story I made up, and it's partly true.
Actually it was my mother who noticed. Her personal trainer tied his shoe not in the “normal” way. My mom was a pastmistress at thinking outside the box, so she asked him about it.
I wanted to learn how.
Over the years, I have failed to practice it and had to work it out again. (I do the same thing with magic tricks, if I don’t run through them regularly, I lose the trick and have to figure it out—which isn’t bad training for how not to give it away, actually).
I bought a pair of bright orange very long shoestrings. For a buck, they serve as a training drill for my knots and a play toy for Miss Kitty.
I learned the third knot from a movie where Harrison Ford is shot, suffers brain damage, renounces his evil lawyerly old self and becomes a great old guy who had to learn how to tie his shoes from his daughter (who learned it from him—a nice touch).
So now I know three knots.
And how to taxi-whistle is Coming Soon.
Kewl.

Cheers
SLI