Indiscriminate tooting doesn't cut the mustard

My world is made of small things, and far too many of them are irritating.

Take, for instance, train whistlers who don't know how to whistle.

Or when.

Railroaders used to use their toots for specific signals. One = stop; two = go; three = back up. And for crossings: two longs, one short, and one long (and the last toot would be tooting as the train entered the crossing).

Alas. No more. At least not in Newark Ohio. The toots are not necessarily long or short. They are just toots, and they are indiscriminately grouped.

As a long-ago, part-time, some-times brakeman in the switching yards of Corning, Ohio and Denver, Colorado, I remember the tooting regimen well. I know that any engineer who would toot to his own whimsical cadence would have suffered one chewed-out caboose.

Today's creative tooters don't cut the mustard and it pisses me off. I lie in bed at night muttering to myself.

As I said, my world is made of small things.