At the brightly lit convenience store late last night on International Women's Day, I walk in where everybody knows my name and I am greeted by the counter clerk who says:
"Hi Shirley! What'ya been up to!?!"
"I been making whistles," I respond and then head past the front counter to the coffee counter.
I pay for the coffee and step outside into the brightly lit parking lot where my truck is parked and idling on a chilly night.
I listen to the radio and sip coffee.
After coffee, I step out of the truck, slam the door shut like I usually do and enter the convenience store again to buy a ginger ale, my favorite drink at the store.
Filling my ginger ale at the fountains and thinking of a good question to ask the counter clerk who addresses me by my chosen name, I am at the counter paying for the ginger ale on my second trip into the store from the truck outside and say to the clerk:
"Care for a whistle?"
"Sure," she replies.
"OK. I'll give you one," I say reaching into my left coat pocket when all of sudden the clerk steps back from the counter and exclaims:
"Oh my god! I'm scared!"
I pull out several wooden whistles I had whittled and stuffed into a bulging coat pocket, tweet a whistle and a look of calm falls over the clerk's face as she eyes the whistles on the counter while stepping forward again.
"I told you I was making whistles, didn't I?"
"Yes. Yes, you did," the clerk responds and I indicate one of the whistles.
"Try that one."
The clerk picks up and tweets a whistle.
"It's loud," she says as she raises her hands to her ears.
"For protection," I tell her and leave the store.
Tonight at about six o'clock, I am buying cigarettes from the tobacconist that I go to regularly and one of the women who work at the shop is behind the counter at one of registers when I step up and she states asking:
"Jester?" while reaching around to the back wall for a pouch of Jester.
"Yes."
"That'll be eight seventy."
I reach into my jeans pocket for my wallet, hand her a ten dollar bill and palm my change.
"Will there be anything else?" she asks after selling me a Jester pouch and shuffling a couple of steps out of the way behind the counter about to do something else.
"No thanks! But, care for a whistle?" I ask her.
"I have a whistle," she exclaims eyes widening at the question as I pull out from my left coat pocket a wooden whistle and show it to her. "But not one of those!"
An older customer, whom she knows apparently, steps to the second register at the front counter and her male co-worker at the second register and the older customer make a joke.
"I carry a whistle and mace with me all the time because I have to walk home late," the clerk who waits on me at the tobacconist states.
"Well, you wouldn't need a whistle with me," the older customer at my right retorts. "You might need the mace."
I leave the tobacconist with a pocket full of whistles not having given the clerk there one.
After whittling at home between the tobacconist at 6pm and another trip to the convenience store at 1am tonight, I idle my vehicle in a spot out front of the convenience store and step inside to buy a ginger ale.
In the back of the store, a male clerk with whom I have spoken over the years while buying ginger ale is stocking shelves with food by the soda fountains. A second male clerk is also stocking shelves in the vicinity of the soda fountains.
"Care for a whistle?" I ask the male clerk with whom I have had more contact than the other.
"No," he replies continuing to stock shelves along side his co-worker while I step up to the ginger ale fountain. "What is that, like, sex?"
I pull a whistle out of my coat pocket and show it to him.
"Did you make that?"
"Yes," I reply and recount the previous night when offering the counter clerk a whistle and how she said that she was scared stepping back from the counter and then grabbed a little, whittled whistle and wet it.
Then, I recount how when I asked the same question at the tobacconist: the question led to talking about whistles, mace and walking home late.
The male clerk with whom I speak grins.
I turn to the second male clerk and ask him the same question as I have been asking people, but he states that he was already shown the whistle by the female counter clerk who was scared on the previous night.
As I pay tonight, I ask the older female clerk operating the register behind the counter the same question: but first, I address the two male clerks loudly across the store from the front counter.
"Hey Rick! Watch this!"
Then, while paying, I ask the female clerk behind the counter:
"Care for a whistle?"
"No. What do you mean 'whistle?' It's probably a trick. I heard you yell across to them."
"I mean 'whistle," I respond pulling out one wooden whistle of the fifteen odd I have in my coat pocket.
"I'm not touching that," she exclaims. "I tell you what: you make one for me and I'll take one."
"Let me show you what I have in my pocket."
"What do you have in your pocket?"
I pull out of my coat pocket several whistles and lay them on the glass-case counter top by the register having paid for the ginger ale.
"Whistles are what I have in my pocket. Care for a whistle?"
I pick up a whistle and she picks up a whistle.
"Blow hard," I say.
"You first!"
"Just put your lips on it and blow," Rick from the back stocking shelves yells towards the front.
I blow, then the female clerk blows into the whistle that she had picked up.
"Oh my god! It works!"
"You can have it," I say turning towards the glass doors for the exit.
"Oh my god! Thank you," the clerk exclaims as I leave through the glass doors, step out into the brightly lit parking lot for my idling truck and head home to whittle little whistles to be wet.
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