whistle day

Why don’t you whistle? – asked me Josh.

Why should I? – I said.

Because today is Whistle Day, he said.

What? – I said.

Whistle Day, he said. The day everybody whistles. No one speaks. All whistle.

This is what I thought, I said. All whistle. But I thought it was a local phenomenon. I thought it was because of some football game or something. I thought it was some new kind of support. A football chant.

No, it’s not, said Josh. It’s not local. The entire country whistles today. The entire world, in fact.

God, I said. Why?

Because of Jay Gerbrich, said Josh

Who is Jay Gerbrich? – I said.

Don’t you know? – said Josh. Jay Gerbrich is the ten-year-old boy who was able to overcome his severe coprolalia entirely on his own, without any help. He is an American, a son of a TV host and a music teacher. He had the disorder since he was four. It was one of the most publicised cases in the history of this syndrome; the boy became a national celebrity. All the doctors gave up on him: all the psychologists, all the psychotherapists. At some point his parents literally ran out of money and lost any hope. And then he started to whistle. Have you seen the boy on YouTube? No? The Whistling Boy. He opened an account and posted his videos, and he asked everyone to whistle with him to help him overcome his problem. At first the service took him down repeatedly and he had a lot of problems with the administration because in the beginning his videos were mostly coprolalia, very severe. But he also received a lot of support. After months of struggle he decided to sue the company and eventually they settled out of court, reportedly for millions of dollars, and the company made some changes to their rules allowing those who have the disorder to upload their material. At that time he had already had quite a following and there appeared hundreds of thousands of such videos. A lot of people suffering from this disorder came out and tried to overcome their condition in public, like he did. In the end he was able to whistle for hours without ever saying a word. It took him about a year and the day it happened was later adopted as International Whistling Day. The UN supported the initiative, and many celebrities and other international organisations. The boy received a lot of awards. On the first Whistle Day they invited him to the White House and whistled all together and recently he was invited to Oxford to promote his case, and they all whistled there too. Do you know that they debate a law in Parliament now, which would make the Queen and the entire Royal Family whistle on this day?

Why don’t you whistle? – I asked Josh.

I whistle, he said and started whistling. Will you whistle? – he asked.

Oh, no, I said, I’d rather have coprolalia.