authur unknown
It was only a little whistle. At ten years old, I was interested in discovery. What made things tick, squeak, nod, blink, cry or pee. In other words, I took things apart and found creative ways to incorporate doll’s eyes, springs, tubes, ball bearings and whistles into my world.
The whistle came out of a squeaky toy. A rubber squeaky toy pig, to be exact. On that particular day, I was minding my own business, sitting on the split rail fence in our front yard, performing pig surgery. I extracted the whistle from the pig’s belly and put it to my lips and blew. It squeaked. I blew in and out, in and out. I then inserted the little whistle into one of my nostrils and softly, carefully, sniffed in and then out. I squeaked. I could even talk and squeak at the same time.
Happily, I started warbling “Tennessee Waltz” accompanied by the whistle and was having quite a concert for myself, when Penny, my five-year old sister, clanged through my Polonaise.
“How do you do that?” she squealed as she jumped up and down trying to figure out my secret.
“Do what?” I teased, whistling and squeaking.
“Let me do it! I can do it!” she begged.
“No!” I said pushing her away with my foot.
I enjoyed the drama and the power I wielded over her as she begged and whined for “her turn,” until the whistle dropped out of my nose and fell in the grass. Miss Bratty Pie was right there, and snatching it up, she snorted it right into her sinus cavity. Her eyes widened. She gagged, and then let out the loudest, scariest scream I ever heard.
“Snort it out!” I shrieked. She screamed even louder.
Daddy blistered out of the house, and his eyes were not evoking the image of buttercups blowing in the wind, either. They looked more like cockle burrs being whacked with a weed whacker.
“What’s going on? What’s the matter?”
“Penny’s got a whistle stuck up her nose!” I bellowed.
“Jesus Christ!” He bellowed back. He grabbed Penny and turned her upside down and shook. “How the hell did you do this?”
“Yaaaaaa!” she screamed. “Sondra made me do it!”
Daddy honed in on me so fast. His face crescendoing into one of those “looks.” You know, that Dammit to Hell look. He lunged for me, but I dodged and ran. He chased me around and around the yard like I was a mangy dog who just stole the ham off the dining room table. Me, screeching the whole time. At some point, he must have realized how absurd he looked chasing a little girl around his front yard because he yelled, “Stop!” Really loud. I stopped. He busted my behind good. I cried and held my butt, feeling so unjustly accused. Penny was still emoting and writhing on the ground, digging her finger into her nose.
Still frantic, daddy tried to calm her. “Ssshhh, honey. Honey. Shut up now, honey. Stop. Shhh. It’s okay.” He patted her arm while looking around helplessly. And, I suppose, not knowing what else to do, he picked her up, “like a bride,” Penny’s story goes, and carried her inside the house to look up her nose with a flashlight. Tweezers poised.
Daddy developed his raging headache while taking Penny to the doctor. Partially because the car ran out of gas on the way and he had to walk eight-blocks to the filling station in sweltering Houston heat. Not to mention, my sister’s incessant screaming, and the fifteen dollar doctor’s fee that he had to pay for “something that should never have happened in the first place.”
When they finally arrived back home, Penny had a big wad of cotton gauze hanging out of her nose. And my father, still looking mean, held that blasted whistle accusingly in my face and said, “This little caper just cost you, Sis. You’re in big trouble!”
If my heart were a fist it would have clenched just then. Daddy was unpredictable. I could see his mind working. I promptly began to focus on counting the twenty-seven mosquito bites that peppered my left leg.
“You are going to… HEY, LOOK AT ME, MISSY! You are going to clean up this house every damned day. And I mean EVERY damned day for the next three damned weeks! Got it?”
“Whew.” I whispered to myself. “That’s all?”
“AND”… He sputtered and flailed around, trying to think of an even more horrible way to punish me. I was more than a wee bit nervous. Then, with an evil smirk, he gazed pointedly at me.
“Oh, hells bells,” I squeaked. “Oh, Jesus, please, please don’t let him say it.” I prayed so hard; I’m surprised I didn’t sprout a halo. He said it.
“And from now on, you’re going to eat EVERYTHING on your plate!”
I gagged. I fought against the visual of slimy, shiny, blood –colored meat...tonight was liver night.
That smug, self satisfied, gauze hanging out of her nose, look Penny gave me made me wish that I could… well… do big feet kick boney asses, do clawed hands squeeeeze scrawny necks? Okay, never mind. It's best we do not go to my “dark place.”
And sadly, today, after all these years, she still loves to revisit that precious little moment in time. That same look of righteous indignation mushrooms over her face when she tells the tale of poor mis-treated her, to some poor hostage. It affects me like fingernails scratching a blackboard. I adore Penny, but I lovingly, sweetly, and sincerely wish that I had another little pig with a whistle that she could shove.
