My Name is Barb and I am a Whistler

"Barbara, quit whistling!", my mom would yell, exasperated at my serenading her in the kitchen. That was the best place in the world to whistle, it was so LOUD! Of course, I would continue to whistle until she yelled three times, then I would acquiesce to her demands.

I am not sure when I started whistling, it seems like I have been doing it all my life. That is the thing about whistling, it just happens. You don't really pay attention to it. It is like breathing.

There is a cafe in the building where I work and the woman who runs it is blind. She recognizes me by my whistle as I walk in the door, but the first time I visited her cafe she thought I was a man. I never thought about whistling and gender before. I told her no I am not a man, and yes, I love to whistle. She smiled.

Then there was that day I walked out of the bathroom, whistling of course. Large bathrooms are even better than mom's kitchen. "Oh, so YOU'RE the whistler," said a woman on her way in. Busted. No privacy for me in the stall, I thought.

Many people have told me how much they love to hear me whistle, how it reminds them of someone long gone. I guess it is a dying art. I usually only see old men in bib overalls whistling in the Farm and Fleet Store. Maybe farmers are just happier people.

Why do we whistle anyway? Is it to attract a mate? Hasn't worked for me yet. Is it a physiological expression of happiness much like tears are of sorrow? I would agree with that. Whistling makes me happy. And when I am happy I whistle. A positive feedback loop.


Perhaps it is an evolutionary link to the days when we were once bird-like. Oh wait, we crawled out of the primordial ooze as reptiles. But birds originated as reptiles, right? Hmm. Facinating.

I was standing in line at the grocery store one day when the person behind me started whistling. I was startled to hear a fellow whistler, and turned around only to see it was a woman whistling! I said to her, "Hey! Another whistler like me!" We talked about our love of whistling and found we were both unable to control the little tunes that pop out of our pursed lips.

The only other female whistler I ever saw was at a nursing home in Indiana. The entertainment of the day was a woman who whistled to cassette recordings of tunes from yesteryear. She would stand there holding her microphone and whistle away to the captive audience. Interesting. Never thought of doing that.

One place I worked had a very unhappy secretary whom nobody liked. Many times a day I would have to walk through the office area to get to the copy machine. Sometimes I would whistle. Well, OK, probably lots of times I would whistle. One day she yelled at me. "Will you please not whistle in this office?", she said, not very nicely. I guess whistling was too happy for her grumpy demeanor. It was carpeted for gosh sakes, not like a bathroom or a kitchen!

If you are a woman, like to whistle, and believe in superstition, don't read Wikipedia's entry on whistling. You will find out that in the Philippines it is improper for women to whistle in public. The US Navy has a saying that only homosexuals whistle. In old England, the saying was "a whistling woman never marries". Oh god, why didn't anyone tell me these things when I was but a child?

Someday I hope to attend the International Whistler's Convention in South Carolina. Check out the site, there are some videos of award winning whistlers. I listened to a few of them, and I must say I think I could hold my own pretty well if I practiced up a bit. Now a word of caution, if you have never seen a whistler perform, it does look a bit strange, but you get used to it.

Well I say, if Snow White says it, it is good enough for me. Give a little whistle.