To my tongue, with love and squalor

I lived in Calgary, Alberta (for you Americans, that's in Canada) from grades 1-7. Thirty below and thru the snow, I walked to school, home for lunch, back to school, home again at 4pm. In bare feet, with barbed wire tied around my feet for traction.

Okay, the feet part isn't true, but the rest of it is.

Anyway, it was cold. One night my parents had a bunch of people over -- it was loud and hot in the house, and I went outside to cool off. The wrought-iron porch railing had a couple inches of new snow on it, made for licking up, and I did. And like the kid in A Christmas Story, I got my tongue stuck. Except that movie woudlnt' be made for another 10 yrs, so I wasn't copying, don't say I was.

Anyway, my tongue stuck to the railing, and the door was closed. I went "Nnnhh! Nnnghh! Nnnnnggghh!!" for a long time, but everyone was having such a good (ie, loud) time inside, no one could hear me.

I was only wearing a T-shirt and it was snowing, and I was getting cold. I knew Mum would be annoyed to find my frozen body hanging by its tongue on the porch in the morning, so finally I pulled my lips back as far as I could, put my two front teeth down in front of my tongue, and scraped them back along the railing. It felt like I was scraping my tongue off frozen metal with my own teeth.

I left a generous helping of bloody tongue, plus a fair amt of skin from my lips on the railing, but at least I didn't freeze to death. If I'd been catholic, I might have had to worry about the sin of self-mutilation, but I wasn't so I had some ice cream instead.

Later, I grew up and got a blog, where I could take every miniscule, irrelevant event of my life and draw it out to the point that it would probably put Herman Melville in a coma. If he read it, I mean. And if he wasn't already dead, which he is. Anwyay, let it be lesson to you young people.