I whistle too much

Strange fact about me: I never learned how to whistle until this year. As a child, I tried to get myself omitted from the Play Day activity in which you stuff your face full of crackers and try to whistle a tune before your opponent. I knew I couldn't whistle — I could barely make a shrill noise by blowing past my teeth — and saltines just aren't good enough for me to want to eat them on their own.

As I built upon my appreciation of music while growing up, I started to find it frustrating that my only options as far as reproducing music was concerned were humming, singing, or trying to pick out a tune on one of the two musical instruments I hardly have a basic understanding of.

There were also the tantalizing snatches of whistling that occurred, occasionally, when I'd breathe out with control while do a workout — an ab-crunch here, a bicep-curl there. I started thinking I wasn't some biologic freak of nature that was physically incapable of whistling.

Matt liked to theorize that he'd come home from work one day, only to find me near-unconscious on the floor, parched, with chapped lips from all the attempted whistling I was undertaking.

When, at the over-ripe age of 30 I finally found my ability to whistle, I knew I had decades worth of practice to make up for.

So it's understandable that I'd seize the opportunity to show my appreciation for my co-worker's taste in music by sometimes whistling along to her choice of song, right? Of course, if she likes music just as much as, if not more than, me, I can see how she'd take my horribly ill-practiced attempts at tune-making as an out-and-out butchering of good songs. Oops!

So I guess I'll be trying to keep my whistle-practice to personal-time. I suppose I can choose to see it as positive that, when my manager was asking for a performance review for me, it was the only complaint she had about me. :)