Growing Up . . .

. . . Stupid Sometimes

Have you ever wondered what could happen if you stuck your tongue out on a cold day and licked a metal door handle (like I did) just for fun? Or maybe affixed your tongue to a shiny metal flagpole?

I knew two fellows who went that route and found out just how much fun they had. As a matter of fact, I was one of them. I was a little tyke about six or seven years old and attending a brand new school after the one I started in burned down.

Sister Mary Anthony wondered where I was one cold morning just after everybody got back into their classrooms after recess. One youngster told the nun I was right behind him on the way in. But I did not show up.

The Sister went looking for me and found me with my tongue firmly adherred to the brass handle of the outside door to the Immaculate Conception School.

Then other Sisters came to see what I did but nobody knew how to unstick me until the principal decided to call the fire department. Two big firemen from Engine Four arrived and studied the situation.

Just then another nun, the cook from the convent, showed up with a pot of warm water and began to pour the water over my face, dripping it on my tongue. The firemen held me still until the cook got still another pan of hotter water and that did the trick.

That was in New England where door handles did get cold and young kids' tongues did stick to them. I probably was not alone when I tried that experiment.

Did things like that happen in the warm South? I found out, as an adult now, here in the city where I live that flagpoles made of shiny steel do get icy cold some of the time.

And I heard of a young fellow who was just as curious as I was many years earlier. He locked his tongue on that flagpole at his school but not when school was in session. (I can't say who this boy was because I wouldn't want to embarass him).

He had a friend who just happened to walk by and see this "stickup." He ran to his home and got his mother who soon had the matter under control . I don't know how she unstuck the tongue licker but maybe it was just like the nun did for me.

Kids do a lot of stupid things. I once got a bit upset at my dad who didn't want me to go someplace (that I can't remember now) so to get back at him I decided to go anyway. From the second floor of my house, I climbed out onto the roof over a small porch but discovered it was too far down to the ground to jump.

I went back to the window but I found it had slipped down and from the outside I could not find a way to raise it up again. It was a neighbor who rescued me. Oh, I was so thankful - until he told my dad.

I didn't learn anything from that incident. I did it again but from a first floor window this second time. I climbed out only after I put a stick under the raised-up window so it would not slip down.

But I was wearing a suit coat and the tail of it got caught on a hook just inside the open window after I had left the window sill. There I hung, about two feet from the ground until Mrs. Courcy next door got a chair and helped me down. Yes, of course she told my mother.

Now I'm going to sit back and wait for stories of little stupidities that might turn up from other bloggers - if they dare to write about them.

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