A whistle in my teapot

Despite the title, this is not a euphemistically naughty post. Shame on you for thinking that!

No, I've been perplexed lately by a mystery in my kitchen. It involves the blue tea kettle that I bought in 1997 in a discount store on Long Island, shortly after I moved there. I was living in a half-basement apartment (dirt piled up in the front yard made it look like a basement level, but you walked around back to the door and it was ground-level and the "first floor" was upstairs with a big deck blocking out whatever sunlight would've made it into my kitchen window. Goddamn Long Island split-level home).

So far in my somewhat cushy life, it was the closest thing to hell on earth. And in that depressing apartment with its hand-me-down furniture and loud, viciously fighting landlord/neighbors, my tea kettle never whistled when I boiled water. Not ever, not even a peep. I assumed it was defective and went on my miserable way.

Imagine my surprise when I unearthed the tea kettle a few months ago (it had been packed up in my parents' attic with other kitchen supplies since my triumphant return to the South in 1998), put it on the stove in my sunny new house and it whistled like Dixie. There's nothing happier than the sound of a whistling kettle. It's really the damnedest thing.