I'm sure Mom and Dad were thrilled, but I don't remember
certain motor skill milestones like starting to crawl as a baby or taking my
first steps as a toddler. However, as a kid, I do remember my frustration as I
struggled to acquire three specific physical abilities. These were attaining
the ability to snap my fingers, to skip, and to whistle. Learning how to do each one in
turn felt like a massive achievement comparable to riding a bike for the first time.
Seeing someone snap their
fingers, producing sound seemingly out of thin air was astounding. My first
attempts at replicating the feat were muted disappointments until I developed
the hand strength and manual dexterity. Ironically, after five decades of my
hands doing everything from cranking wrenches to punching keyboards, the stiffness
in my fingers is making snapping them a slowly ebbing ability.
One day for Friday recess in second grade, the day’s
activity was a relay race where one leg involved skipping to the next person on
your team. You learn to crawl by six months and walk by eighteen months. Where
along that development timeline do you learn to skip? I felt truly inadequate
because I had no idea how. Observing my classmates with a quiet desperation, I couldn’t
pick it up just by watching them. When I ran my skipping leg, my inexperienced
footwork made me look like a Monty Python knight riding a wooden stick horse.
Not wanting to repeat that embarrassment, I spent all
weekend practicing skipping between our front door, down the walkway to our
mailbox and back. Passing cars viewing all this were likely wondering at this clumsy
kid continuously tripping over himself in his front yard. “Aww. Bless his
heart.”
The struggle paid off, and the next recess period, anxious
to show off my new skill, I was skipping everywhere - to the playground,
around the playground, and during the PE teacher’s instructions for the day. Eventually,
the teacher called me aside saying something along the lines of, “Wayne, let’s put
on our listening ears and follow the activity instructions,” but was basically
saying, “C’mon, kid. Lay off the sugar and calm the heck down.”
Despite the effort in learning the skip step, I can’t think
of a single time since those recess periods where I’ve utilized that hard-won technique.
Whistling was like snapping my fingers. I found being able
to spontaneously create a melodious sound without an instrument was
mesmerizing. I believe my buddy Noel was trying to teach me one day, and after
some initial attempts, he was giving me a tolerant, “Say it, don’t spray it,”
look. I eventually did unlock that achievement, and one day I was about eight when a commercial for suntan lotion came on the TV. During the parade of bikini-clad
females prancing across the screen, I let out a long wolf whistle. I didn’t
understand why, but according to all the Looney Tunes cartoons I’d seen, that’s
what a literal cartoon wolf would do when seeing a bikini clad woman.
Mom was standing right behind me.
“Wayne! Where did you learn to do that?!” Apparently, this
was a rhetorical question. She didn’t bother waiting for a response, and the
look on her face confirmed I should keep my ready answer to myself. With one hand on her hip and the other in full
on, mom finger wagging mode, she continued, “You’d better watch yourself. If
you try that nonsense at the beach, you’re likely to get yourself slapped!”
Whistling is yet another hard-won skill whose lack of usage
doesn’t match the effort expended to acquire it. These days, wolf whistles are
reserved for Andrea - usually when she’s walking away.
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