Every time I see the movie Christmas Story, I wonder how someone could actually do what this little boy did. I guess the temptation was just too great for a 6-year-old!!!
(Photo from Omaha.com/Alyssa Schukar)
(Photo from Omaha.com/Alyssa Schukar)Published Friday January 16, 2009
It wasn't the best day to stick your tongue on a pole
BY ELIZABETH AHLIN
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
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.
With Mason and his twin sister, Darby, wailing, his mom poured two more glasses, freeing Mason but leaving behind traces of Mason's tongue.
Then the bleeding started.
"It was scary," Mason said.
With a raw, swollen tongue and a slight fever, Mason spent several hours recovering from the pain of learning a life lesson the hard way.
Mason had seen the movie "A Christmas Story," but he wasn't sure why he did it.
Nobody triple-dog dared him, like the character Schwartz did to young Flick in the 1983 film.
Mason had thought about doing it before, and his parents had told him there would be consequences. But for some reason, he said, that light pole stuck in his mind as he walked across his lawn Thursday morning.
He didn't think anything bad would happen.
"I thought it wasn't sticky enough," said Mason.
But now Mason knows two things — frozen metal poles and tender little tongues are not a good combination; and he will never, ever do it again.
"No way."
