My dad’s whistle

“Growing up, I loved running errands with my dad. He always took me to, what seemed to me at the time, the coolest places. Realistically it was just like home depot or ace hardware, but all of the fun tools and stuff fascinated me. Being a kid though, I always had the tendency to wander off and explore on my own and see what I could find.”

“It’s not really safe for a kid to be wandering around the store alone, especially in that day and age, so my dad sort of developed a call to let me know where he was so I could find him. It was a whistle with three different tones. The first tone was lower, and then the second tone went higher, and then the third tone went lower again. It’s not like it was the most unique of calls, realistically anybody could do it, but I always knew that it was him whenever I heard it. I knew that if I heard that whistle that I was needed somewhere for some reason and immediately had to find my dad, even if it wasn’t an urgent situation.”

“I asked my dad where he learned that tune from and he said that he just kind of made it up. He said growing up he was never able to whistle and that when he finally learned to a little bit, those were the only three pitches he could hit, and together they made that tone. That was the tone he always whistled to I guess I just associated it with him. Now I do that whistle too when I’m looking for people, even though they probably don’t know what it is.”

 

My Interpretations on the story:
The whistle in this story can be considered a symbol to that family. The tone is specific to that family because of the way it originated, therefor can be looked at as symbolic to that family. Because the father generated that call through the only tones he was able to whistle, it is unique to him and his family. Additionally, this call has imprinted a meaning in the mind of his family as something that is specific to their father or husband and represents him, giving the call more of a purpose than just finding other family members. I think that it is also gives the family a sense of uniqueness, because this tone is specific to them rather than taken from other wavelengths of life.