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Speak of me as I am

There are so many rules where I live, so many conventions; many of them are too obvious to notice, too obvious to consider as anything other than ‘common sense’. Those are the ones I sometimes wonder about, however. Why do we feel we feel a need to wear socks that match each other, and yet assume it is okay to choose a shirt that is at odds with our pants? Why does that seem acceptable? Why does anybody who wears a toque with his suit stand out somehow? Why is he not one of us?

Sometimes, of course, in the fullness of time, things do change and we look back on the old ways as quaint, or even wrong: why would anybody wear their baseball caps backward, for example; why wouldn’t all cities have bike lanes along their major streets; why shouldn’t we try to respect people who are… different?

There is often an interregnum where old mixes with new, to be sure, but eventually we slide into the difference as if it’s natural; for the young, though -at least for those who dare to look up from their phones- it must be difficult to imagine that things weren’t always the way they are now.

Norms vary from place to place of course, as anybody who has travelled realizes fairly quickly. But in each society, their different etiquette seems equally unexamined, and simply accepted as the way things are -the way things should be. In each it would be difficult to transgress without being noticed, and perhaps even censured. For a visitor used to their own customs, some things might be just irritating: the sounds of unrestrained, noisy children, for example; angry behaviour in a theatre, however, or maybe loud shouting in a restaurant would probably  be upsetting. We wear our norms like underwear: always there underneath…

Still, even in the culture to which I am accustomed, I’m not sure what determines my preferences; I’m even less certain about why I find annoying, some things which others seem to accept. For example, I find people who whistle tunes in public incredibly irritating. I realize it doesn’t quite rise to the level of a moral breach or an ethical transgression, but all the same there is something cloyingly disconcerting about the unfeeling naïveté of its practitioners.

I’m usually undecided whether to confront or pretend to ignore the sacrilege, though. In a symphony hall or a church I could rely on other angry glares, and my whispered outrage would serve to confirm my membership in the common.  But what about whistling in a waiting room, or the aisle in a supermarket for that matter, where it is important not to be sidetracked from the purpose which brought me there? After all, distraction is the enemy of memory; and anyway, didn’t whistling launch a thousand ships? Or was that Helen of Troy…? See what I mean?

The most pitiful thing about somebody whistling in public, however, is their attempt to make it sound ornamental and skillfully contrived. It’s as if they’d practiced for days in the shower to add the trills and modulations. And it’s as if at the end of their recital, they expect applause, and certainly not, in their stead, curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not… well, perhaps not quite so Macbethian, but I’m sure they want satisfied, envious smiles nonetheless. Frankly, if I were them, I’d just feel embarrassed and slink away.

Of course, perhaps some of my disdain for their folly stems from my inability to acquit myself similarly. Not that I would, even if I could, you understand; I do not seek the spotlight and with the meagre talents with which I was rewarded, am not tempted to aspire to the podium. I blame -if that is even necessary- my whistleless journey through life on the prairie orthodontist who mistakenly valued smiling, not whistling, as the key to adolescent social acceptance. Clearly, he (they were all he in those days) thought nothing of imprisoning my teeth in sharp spikes that dared my lips to pucker; clearly he had never gone walking with the guys and passed a group of giggling girls on the other side of the road who would have felt neglected had we not whistled at them to show our appreciation.

Anyway that was then, and this is now. I realize that, like most other similar male-dominant proclivities, whistling at people is considered rude nowadays: a form of poorly camouflaged sexual harassment.

Still, if nothing else, in the olden days random hi-there- whistling was key: the cards were openly displayed on the table, clearly and safely visible from the other side of the street. Anyway, it was a talent I desperately coveted during my formative years; I was naïve in those days, or perhaps more accurately put: shy. And anyway, I suspect that being waved at by a short kid with glasses and a mop of curly hair, attracted the wrong kind of attention. As you can probably guess, that didn’t get me many dates -well, none actually…

But there remains a vexing question that has troubled me from long before my dotage crept silently upon me: why does whistling seem to be a male thing? All non-orthodontally damaged lips can be trained: they are totally binary. Of course I cannot speak for Gen Z and certainly can no longer claim to remember much about the millennials, a class from which my children have only recently graduated, but, surely the need to demonstrate interest, the desire to send a wordless message is genderless.

So, I wonder if Emojis and texting fill that otherwise unassigned role nowadays? Maybe it’s no longer necessary to flirt with shrill labial souffles, or shy waves -especially if you don’t know the person you’re trying to attract and they are not paying any attention to you. Okay, I have no idea how kids can text someone they don’t know, but I assume it’s done by contacting mutual friends, or using TikTok or something.

I realize there’s a lot I’d have to learn if I were a kid nowadays: I’d probably still be using Facebook and get hacked.

Uhmm, I suppose you can’t just walk up to someone, say hello, then introduce yourself, eh? Maybe there are different rules for old people…

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