Tuesday, August 4, 2015

A complete catalogue of the times and places it’s ok to whistle

Spoiler alert - it’s never ok to whistle.

Whistling is probably the single most annoying sound the human body is capable of making - setting aside Roseanne Bar jacked up on painkillers squealing the national anthem.  And despite millennia of human evolution designed to eliminate members of the species who provoke one another with their shrill, piercing assault on our ears, there remain a shockingly high number of people roaming the streets with a skip in their step and an off-key whale mating call emanating from their lips.  To put this whole messy business to bed once and for all, below are a list of common misconceptions about when it’s acceptable to whistle.

The office - You’re already persona non grata with most of your co-workers after snatching the last cupcake at Barry’s “good luck on the face lift” party.  People are looking for any excuse to report you to the boss for squirreling away a lifetime’s worth of those really smooth gel ink pens that they keep in the supply closet.  But you’re feeling particularly oblivious to the feelings and comfort of others on one particular Monday afternoon so you start screeching out the chorus of “Baby Got Back” while everyone else prays that you choke on the lifesaver just popped in your mouth.  All it takes is one of them, just one, to rat you out for stealing and with every foul, off-key note, you bring yourself closer to the precipice.  Why would you take that chance?  


A wedding - There are only two real possible outcomes of you whistling at a wedding and neither of them has a happy ending.  You’re standing around at the post-ceremony cocktails and you’re bored because no one is impressed by your ironic bowtie with matching pocket square and so you start to whistle a little diddy you picked up while you were, I assume, learning to whittle in prison.  The worst case scenario is that someone assumes you’re “hollering at” the bride which is offensive to literally everyone else at the event and you go from unpopular wall flower to social pariah.  However, the best case scenario is not much better.  Maybe everyone assumes you’re whistling at the hot bridesmaid who bought the dress a size too small to show off her new boob job and now you’re upstaging the bride and being a lech all at the same time.  Well played, you.  Maybe you should have just kept your lips shut in the first place.

The gym - Do you see that big guy over there?  The one trying to lift twice his weight in...weights?  He’s focused.  He’s determined.  He’s 30 seconds away from a roid rage outburst that would blow the doors off of your whittling shack in the prison yard.  Why on earth would you lackadaisically blow the air from inside your skull out through your mouth to pierce his eardrums and his concentration so that he drops half a car’s worth of metal plates on the floor before coming over and making you pick them up one by one with what’s left of your toes?  Doesn’t seem like it was worth it?  Non?

Really anywhere - There’s really no end to the number of places where you really should just zip your lips rather than whistle.  Suffice it to say, if you’re one of the few people that evolution has forgotten, it’s only a matter of time.  But there’s help, and so there’s hope.  Next time you are feeling light of heart and fleet of foot and you can feel your mouth starting to form the devil’s most insidious instrument of torture, just remember that a defendant cannot be held responsible for actions taken during a state of temporary insanity caused by the excruciating discomfort you are about to create.