It is a melancholy truth that whistlers pollute the atmosphere.
Haltom's Fifth Law is unprepossessing. No one to whose whistling I have been subjected in some public place has been able to carry a tune via whistling. I do not know why this should be; I know that it is the case. I suppose that there are exceptions. If the University of Puget Clowns bestows an honorary degree on Jean "Toots" Thielmans, then I may come into the presence of someone who might whistle in public and who can. Until that day, I insist that the classes "People who whistle loudly before strangers" and "People who can whistle well" seldom if ever overlap.
I have not been able to ramify this observation. I have heard the occasional lout drive by with an explosive stereo bombarding the avenues with his musical tastes, but his tastes coincided with mine. So I regard it as a mere probability that those who play their car stereos at "setting eleven" [This Is Spinal Tap] will select truly awful music. So some people who play music that is amplified beyond all reason select music that should be heard loud and often -- say "Sympathy for the Devil."
Of course, I could use Haltom's Fourth Law to inflate Haltom's Fifth Law. Although it isn't true that "No One Who Sings in Public Can," I could force the proposition by denying the exceptions. Barring such Procrustean exertions, however, I must admit that I have heard people sing in public, even on street corners for change, who sing pleasantly. Whistling, by contrast, might as well be fingernails on a chalkboard or an operatic aria.
I have never heard a co-worker or a colleague whistle about campus in a pleasing manner. Indeed, usually the whistling is as pleasant as "overhearing" a conversation in an airport terminal. One boob screams into a cellular phone as if it were a tin can the vibrations from which had to reach out and tickle some other tin can across a cord; thank God that he is using a walkie-talkie style phone so that we may all hear the interlocutor's responses re crab lice, death threats, or car racing -- the usual topics of the loudest talkers. As Bill Maher has observed, included among these aural oafs are many folks who are incensed that the FBI or CIA should monitor their phone calls. These oafs should worry not. Let one agent overhear them in a terminal and the oaf's phone number will be taken off any watch list lest those listening file for workman's comp.
I cannot explain why Haltom's Fifth Law should be so. Perhaps many tin-ears whistle when they are happy and their good humor deafens them to the foul airs they issue.
Maybe the bombardiers are trying to drown out the meanness and repetition in their lives, a la the dwarves before Snow White.
Just whistle while you work / Put on that grin and start right in to whistle loud and long /
Just hum a merry tune / Just do your best and take a rest and sing yourself a song /
When there's too much to do / Don't let it bother you /
Forget your troubles / Try to be just like a cheerful chick-a-dee /
After all, many colleagues act as if they work the salt mines, so maybe they believe that they do.
However, this explanation does not fit the most prominent faculty whistlers. They do no work, so how could they be whistling to make more bearable that which they never do? Maybe they would be explained by an alternative hypothesis from The King and I, another song in another movie for which I do not care:
Whenever I feel afraid / I hold my head erect /
And whistle a happy tune / So no one will suspect I'm afraid. /
While shivering in my shoes / I strike a careless pose /
And whistle a happy tune / And no one ever knows I'm afraid.
The result of this deception / Is very strange to tell /
For when I fool the people / I fear I fool myself as well!
Coming Soon -- Haltom's Six Law: Those who are committed should be.
2 comments:
The ones with the little ear-attachments--blue-tooths?--are most frightening because they appear to be talking loudly to no one, and perhaps that is the case....My uncle Fred, who is still with us, whistles out of doors--and well; but usually it was (for instance) when he was out for a stroll near his pond and thus did not believe himself to be "in public." That is, one pretty much had to catch him at it. Ergo, one who can whistle well in public is reticent to do so, a wee variation on HL-5.
Maybe Fred realizes how jarring can be for someone to breeze in whistling loudly. Like the bluetoothed, the whistlers seem utterly unaware of owing any duty to others.
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