It is an old ruse, but for many, it continues to be an act marking a certain coming of age, a certain cosmic awareness. You know what I’m talking about—the licking-the-flagpole-in-the-cold trick. Really, anything steel or cast iron will suffice; with me, it was an iron schoolyard swing set, for my daughter, an aluminum canoe sitting in our backyard.
I don't recall why I did it–my guess is that I was curious about the rumor that your tongue would freeze to the flagpole so hard you couldn't pull it off. It didn't seem plausible; no glue is involved, no magnetic attraction, no alien force field. I figured the whole thing was a hoax.
Never mind that I should have noticed how damp mittens, especially the fuzzy kind, stick to flagpoles and doorknobs. But in the face of such reason, all it takes is a simple dare, often issued by older kids who know how it will all turn out.
Part of the reason we get sucked into it is because the flagpole looks harmless. Peeing on an electric fence during the summer, on the other hand, had ominous connotations from the start. We knew the wire was charged with 20,000 volts; after all it did make large and not-very-smart cows behave.
A flagpole, however, is not electrified. There are no levers involved, no hinges, bells, batteries, or springs attached. Besides, since the dare doesn't usually stipulate the amount of time you actually have to have your tongue on the metal, you figure that if you do it really quickly, nothing will happen.
Quick or not, my tongue got stuck, and after a few panic-stricken moments, I got it free. There was some bleeding and the only first aid available was in the paper towel dispenser in the bathroom. It is my experience that brown towels don't taste very good either.
But the real injury was the one to my ego. I had thought it wouldn't happen to me. I had an almost-scientific rationale as to why it couldn't happen to me.
Later in life, I figured out the secret to the flagpole trick. Instead of panicking and trying to quickly reclaim the tongue, all you have to do is wait just a few seconds until the part of the pole attached to your tongue begins to thaw. It's elementary really.
I am certain of this theory because after many years of thinking about it, I tried it.
Unlike the many kids who learned their lesson at the time, I licked the flagpole as an adult. And even though my hunch was right, I didn't tell my wife I did it, just like I didn't want my friends to know back then that I had fallen for the oldest one in the book. WT
Justin Isherwood writes and farms in Plover.