Are you listening?

There’s nothing more annoying than having to scream to get someone’s attention. You’re standing outside your house and you want your son/wife/mother/father to come out so that you can pass along some vital piece of information crucial to their survival and the best that you can do is scream out their name and hope they not only hear but respond.

Of course in our technologically sophisticated society that we have now, you could whip out your cell phone and speed dial the cell phones they all have and make your request. Of course if their phones are not on, they don’t have it with them or they are busy texting someone else. . . well, you can see the problem.

When I was growing up in the Bronx in the 1950’s we didn’t have such modern conveniences to get people’s attention. Screaming was the norm in the city; one person’s scream was no different than another’s, so it wasn’t a very effect method of getting one’s attention. My family had our own secret method to get each other’s attention. We also used it with friends of my mothers. It was a whistle. Not one that you buy at the store, but the one you make with when you pucker your lips and blow. The whistle glided from a low pitch to a higher pitch and then after a breath of air, changed to a stead sound somewhere between the two pitches. It sounded like this: whistle

This was an all-purpose whistle. When you heard it, you realized that someone was seeking your attention; if you faced in that direction you could determine who was sending and what needed to be shared. My family’s apartment was on the second floor of an eleven-story apartment building; the whistle was usually used from outside the building to signal a person inside. It was also used when outside and someone was too far away to hear you call their name. I guess whistles travel farther than words.

My parents used it when they wanted my sisters or me to stick our heads out of our windows so they could tell us that they were waiting for something. Usually someone to help them carry something upstairs. I used it usually when I wanted my mother to toss me something out the window that was desperately needed (a glove, a hat, my Spaldeen). In the winter when most of the windows were shut, I usually had to hit the window with a snowball as I was whistling. My mother’s friends used it to check and see if anyone was home, so that they could visit. (Why bother walking up that one flight of stairs (or take the elevator) if no one was home.) This method worked both ways, when we visited their houses.

It was a very effective technique, without having to scream or use any technological gizmo we were able to get each other’s attention. Fortunately for us, we were the only ones that used whistles. It might have been a little more complicated if other people had whistles of their own to communicate with. But they didn’t, everyone else just screamed.