Worst Blog Ever

I’ve never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer.  In fact, I’m what some might describe as a dim bulb.  It is with that preface in mind now, that I tell you about the time that I got my tongue stuck to a sledge hammer.
Contrary to what my friends may believe, this tragically humorous episode occurred when I was still very young.  I don’t remember the exact year, but I’m pretty sure it happened when I was eight or nine years old.  At this point in my life, we were living in Renfrew, Ontario.  Renfrew is a quaint small town in the Ottawa Valley, where I spent five years of my life between the age of 5 and 10.
On this particular day, my mother, two sisters, and younger brother were all in the AMC Pacer travelling to pick up my father from his place of work, Renfrew TV.  My brother and sisters were in the passenger seats, and I was riding in the hatch.  In those years there were no seatbelt laws and the idea of piling your kids into the hatch was, if not normal, at least not frowned upon.
As my father was a tool-a-holic, there were quite a few tools clanging around in the hatch with me, one of those tools was a sledge hammer.
Before going any further, I wanted to point out that being a child in Canada, one of the things you are taught at a very young age is that you DO NOT put your tongue on metal in the winter.  Why Not?  A child may ask.  Well, because the cold metal will cause the moisture on your tongue to freeze onto the metal.
Now, there are a couple ways of looking at how I arrived at the next part of the story:

1. Lord help him, he’s just not that bright.
2. Being of a sceptical and inquisitive mind, he could not take such a claim at face value, hence an elaborate experiment must take place with a well thought out hypothesis, a descriptive methodology section, a concise and decisive conclusion, and reams of bibliographic citations.

Regardless of which way you look at it, I put tongue to freezing cold metal.  Not a spoon, not my coat’s zipper pull, I licked a sledge hammer!  I remember that day quite well, and I think I can remember my exact words:

“Enh?”
“Ennnh?”
“Ennnhhhh?”
“ENNNNNNNNHHHHHHHHH?!?!?!”
“ENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I can only assume that after seeing me through the rear view mirror with a sledge hammer glued to my tongue, that my mother’s laughter was stress induced as she was genuinely concerned for my welfare.  At least that is what I’ve been telling myself for the last 34 years.  As this happened on the way to my father’s workplace, and as Renfrew is a small town to begin with, my mother decided that it would be best to continue on to my father’s workshop with a sledge hammer hanging out of my mouth.
We arrived at my father’s workshop, my mother’s stress induced laughter (yes, it must have been stress induced) continuing as she helped me out of the hatchback and into the workshop.  When we got into the workshop, my mother called my father to help rescue me from this ice-cold demon of death that was currently making my tongue burn with the cold.  My father arrived and I can only assume that after seeing this horrific sight, that his laughter was also stress induced.
I was led into the back room where my father poured luke warm water onto my tongue and the sledge hammer, and within a few seconds, minutes or hours, depending on which side of the sledge hammer you were, I was released from this torturous prison.
I impart this information to you all, with the notion that you will one day pass it on to your own children as a cautionary tale.  And I’m sure that any laughter that may have come from reading this entry was entirely stress related.