. . .Mom, in a pleading and caring voice says: “don’t put your tongue on the lamppost.”

She lets me go; I have a toboggan rope in one hand as I place the toboggan at the top of the dozen stairs and I am in heaven, sliding down fresh snow for about 6 to 10 feet, maybe. The short distance I identified today was, at that Moment, the greatest and longest sled ride of my life. WOOHEEEE! Living in the Moment is the greatest gift we have; how soon will we forget the childhood bliss of living in The Present Moment?

And so, I’m sliding, climbing back up the few stairs as if it’s Mount Everest, placing my sled carefully at the crest of the stairs, looking back at the concerned family peering from the window, wondering how soon I’ll start complaining about how cold it is and wanting to save my life by coming inside.  But here I have no worries, no fear of the cold, no desire to re-enter the boring home with boring parents and siblings who are all afraid to step out into the wild expanse and bliss of the outdoors in a super-cold snowstorm event. I am in complete enjoyment, sliding and climbing and sliding. When I tire of climbing my many “Mount Everest” Steps, I take to starting my snowman.

I begin to create the snowman, starting with a snowball, and as I painstakingly roll it out across the snow, the layers upon layers stick to the rounded ball which gets bigger and bigger. Rolling it over the snow as it sticks requires greater and greater effort, as it gets progressively heavier and bigger, until it’s now extremely difficult to roll any larger. I’m sweating from the exertion of rolling out the first and largest ball that forms the base of The Incredible Snowman I am visualizing in my greatest of imaginings.

The snowman now has a bottom boulder of snow, woof! I’m so hot under all these darned clothes, though it’s freezing cold, but I’m just sweating from the exertion of the first massive snowball, the snowman’s base. The snowman that will soon be forgotten as I peer at the lamppost, eyeing it. The lamppost is talking to me: “Why did Mom tell you not to touch me with your tongue? I am the lamppost, tall and solid under this snowstorm, and maybe I’m delicious, too delicious for Mom to tell you how good it is to touch me with your tongue.”

Now I’m entranced by the lamppost, so I approach it and think back to all mom’s warnings of the cold, how dangerous the great outdoors is, and how she went on and on while I wasn’t listening, instead, I was busy imagining my sliding, and climbing my Mount Everest, to slide down again, and again. She mentioned not putting my tongue on the lamppost, but why can’t I lick it? Maybe it’s too yummy? I am reluctant, and scared, yet I convince myself there is something special here, or Mom wouldn’t have told me not to; and so, out of curiosity I place my tongue delicately on the lamppost to taste it. But now I’m stuck, frozen to the dreaded lamppost I was so carefully warned about. I pull back from the lamppost and the pain is worse, and every time I again try to retract, the agony is even worse. I’m stuck here forever and ever – it seems like hours pass, as I cry out in convulsive howls of pain and suffering. And, since I’m stuck, I’m still, so I commence to get cold.

 It's so cold the tears running down my cheeks seem to congeal and harden on my freezing cheeks. The cold is now overwhelming, but not enough to overcome the pain of my tongue, glued by the freeze to the lamppost. What will I do, my screams go unheard as every window and door is sealed tightly against the cold, preventing my screams from attaining the ears of a parent or friend anywhere. “Help me!” I yell out in vain, “HELP ME!”

Finally, after what seems like eternity, the door opens as mom comes to check up on me and sees me in tears, stuck to the pole. She comes running out and is soon overwhelmed by the Siberia-like freezing-cold weather. As Mom tried to pull me off the pole, my frozen tongue elongated and the pain was excruciating, so the crying amplified. Mom runs back into the house, yelling back through my screams that she will boil water and get dressed.

Soon, the whole family is at the door, and Dad also gets all bundled-up against the cold. He comes out and accusingly peers down at me, repeating: “Didn’t your mother tell you not to stick your tongue to the pole?” To which I could only increase my crying and convulsions. My shame and fear intensified with the condemning words, while imagining the disciplinary measures to be taken against me for being bad. I’m always bad, it seems and always subjected to that darned strap. The punishment in this household does not fit the crime and is always extreme. Or dad just doesn’t know his strength. Dad is a very large man. He looms over everyone he encounters, or so it seems to me, for I see my dad as grandiose, the biggest and best. He is my father, and he is the most powerful of all.

As soon as mom could, she came out with a kettle of boiling water and consoling words, telling me this would warm the pole enough for my tongue to come off. Mom pours the whole kettle distressingly close to my face and frozen tongue, and, to her surprise and my dread, it doesn’t do anything. And so, the crying gets worse; the pain and suffering are amplified by my convulsing and now also my freezing. It is so deeply cold that this ‘trick’ to release the frozen tongue did not work. How horrible! As the pain and cold increase, the day becomes night, but I’m still stuck to the darned pole. The family is rallying around me in the bitter cold. I’m going to die out here. Well, not quite yet.

Time to regroup as Mom runs back in, and they put every pot on the stove to boil water, determined to get the darned lamppost hot enough for the freeze to thaw enough, and release my now frozen‑stiff tongue, the pain and suffering increasing by the second. Soon, the family creates a chain, and the containers of boiling, dangerously hot water, are carefully passed from sibling to adult to sibling to Mom, who carefully pours the scalding hot water onto the post, below but as close as she can get to my frozen-solid tongue. 

This takes what seems like forever, with the yells to boil more water, and keep the flow coming lest the warming of the pole not reach the higher level where my tongue is still stuck. The pole below the stuck tongue is now steaming from its warmth, creating fog and blinding my mom. Dad intervenes and pours some of the scalding water directly on my tongue to get it unstuck, yelling back at Mom’s protests that it’ll burn me, and firmly stating to her: “better to burn a little than to stay stuck here all night and die.”

And so, the Story of My Life