Showing posts with label A Christmas Story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label A Christmas Story. Show all posts

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Flick lives!!!


The Omaha World-Herald has confirmed something far more exciting than the likelihood of life on Mars.

THE INTREPID journalists of the city's daily newspaper have -- Can I get a drum roll here? Thanks -- the intrepid scriveners of Nebraska's largest daily have discovered Flick in Omaha! Can Ralphie and Skut Farkas be far behind?
The tall metal light pole was irresistible in the early morning subzero temperatures.

Mason Mulick had walked past it countless times before; he'd considered it; he'd been counseled against it.

But Thursday, on Omaha's coldest day this winter, the 6-year-old gave in.

He opened his mouth, leaned into the pole and unwittingly recreated a modern Christmas classic in an Omaha neighborhood near 164th and Pacific Streets. When Mason's little tongue touched metal, it stuck.

Arms flailed, Mason screamed, and the neighborhood kids waiting for the car pool crowded around, yelling: "His tongue's stuck on the light pole! His tongue's stuck on the light pole!"

His panicked mother, Laci Mulick, looked outside and saw Mason's predicament. In seconds, she was out there too — in her pajamas with two glasses of water.

A neighbor poured the first glass of water.

Still stuck.

With Mason and his twin sister, Darby, wailing, his mom poured two more glasses, freeing Mason but leaving behind traces of Mason's tongue.
SEE? THAT'S WHAT happens when you're only 6.

When you're 6, you just don't have any mastery of technique yet. The kid just went into this tongue-on-light-pole thing like a dimwitted bull in a china shop.

I'll bet he put his whole tongue on that pole. Please. Kid, it was 16 below!

And I'll bet the little twerp just left it on there, too. It was bound to get hopelessly stuck. Novices . . . sheesh!

AT THESE temperatures -- I mean, we're talking full-fledged mid-January Arctic blast here -- technique is everything. If you don't have your technique down pat, we're talking stuck tongue . . . kids abandoning you to icy death just because the bell rings . . . and, finally, the fire department showing up to save everything but your pride.

Technique, technique, technique. Learn it. Live it. Love it.

OK . . . we're talking double digits below zero. No other option but a little . . . and quick. Kind of like when your mom makes you kiss your aunt.

The light pole is your aunt . . . if not your sister. Remember it! What's the light pole?

That's right -- aunt. Maybe sister.

SO . . . the key to extreme-cold pole licking is to use just the very tip of your tongue. No more than an eighth-of-an-inch swath.

And just as importantly, you gotta be quick. Touching that teeniest tip of the tongue to said light pole for more than a half-second -- one second at the outside . . . and I wouldn't wager on you emerging able to speak clearly at a second -- is a recipe for sheer disaster. Ask Flick. Or Mason.

Disaster. Abandonment . . . fire trucks . . . humiliation . . . yadda yadda yadda.

There's a right way and a wrong way to do everything. Forget that, and you just as well send the video in to Jackass.