Fingernails VII, or Acoustics

Anyone can whistle. But not everybody should.

There's an inveterate whistler in MOS's neighborhood. She roams the sidewalks of this little corner of western Queens whistling up a storm nearly every morning. Mostly, it's patriotic tunes--"Yankee Doodle," "My Country 'Tis of Thee"--with the occasional smattering of "Funiculi, Funicula" (spelling? Oh, who cares!). It would be tolerable if it were (a) rarer and (b) not just-that-little-bit-off-key. MOS has apparently seen the woman up close and resisted the urge to club her with a walker. Barely. She (MOS) is perfecting her helpless little old lady look before undertaking homicidal activities. It'll go over better in court.

As we continue our hometown adventure, we are struck by the ambient noise. We've been sleeping in our childhood bedroom, located on the corner of MOS's building, and, in turn, over the corner of a semi-busy intersection. Of course, just about any New York City intersection--even in a comparatively quiet neighborhood--will be louder by an order of magnitude than the parking lot our California bedroom overlooks. The braking of buses, the bickering of cabbies, even just the normal enhanced-decibel conversations of late-night pedestrians. We remember being able to drift off to sleep as a child, but, for the life of us, we can't imagine how we did it.