The Freezer in the Den
The
den in the old two-story house where I grew up has changed a lot over the
years. It was located on the
ground floor and you had to go through it to get to the “cubby-hole” where my
dad kept all his guns under the wooden staircase. Today it’s used in the traditional sense of a den, with an
easy chair, sofa, and wall of books, but at various times it served in a range
of ways. Once it had a foldout
couch and acted as a guest room and for a while it was even home to an old
upright freezer. That may seem a
little odd, but homes of its vintage weren’t really designed with modern
conveniences in mind, so sometimes you just had to improvise.
I was playing in
the den one day with my brother LaMar and my friend Kenny Labrum and for some
reason we opened the freezer. You
might think that, being boys of nine or ten, we were scrounging for food, but
you have to remember that back in those days convenience food, as we know it
today didn’t really exist.
It’s not like we would have expected to find a package of Dino Buddies
or anything like that. Everything in there would have needed a long-thawing out
and was probably part of a deer. I
guess we could have been looking for popsicles, but really it doesn’t
matter. The point is that, as we
stood there with the door open, Kenny started telling how so-and-so’s cousin
had once stuck his tongue to a metal freezer shelf and couldn’t get it off.
“Oh, that’s just
an old wives’ tale,” said LaMar.
“It couldn’t really happen.”
“Uh huh, could
too.”
“Could not”
I think you see
where this is going, so I’ll just cut right to the part where LaMar went about
proving his point. Yep, he just
went right ahead and stuck his tongue right on the ice-coated shelf. “See, watch!” Those were his last
understandable words of the day.
LaMar’s almost
instant realization of his mistake was quickly evident in his body
language. He tried to pull his
head back, and then started a little dance with his feet. At first it was a little two-step and
then he was sort of running in place as a totally incomprehensible sound came
from his mouth.
“See! He’s stuck!” Kenny’s voice was oddly
filled with pride.
“Naw, he’s fakin,’”
I said.
“Uh uh, he’s
stuck!”
“Nnghhhh!” was all LaMar could muster.
Now we arrive at a
critical juncture in the story. I,
like my brother, hadn’t believed Kenny when he said you could really get stuck
to a frozen object, but at this point LaMar did indeed appear to be stuck. Now, you might think that what happened
next was a result of me not wanting to admit being wrong, but that wasn’t it at
all. You see, even though my
brother was a year and half older, I was always convinced that I could out-do
him at just about anything so, even though the part of me that didn’t want to
admit to being wrong was hoping he was faking, the part of me that thought I
was better and smarter than my brother was telling me that even if he were
really stuck to the freezer, I , as
the superior being, certainly wouldn’t get stuck. Yep, again I think you see where this is going – pretty
incredible isn’t it?
“No he’s not –
watch!” More last words. Less than five seconds later, I joined my brother in the dance.
“Nnngghh!”
“Nnnnghhhhh!” It was the best we could do.
“See, I told
you!!” Kenny cried, his victory
complete.
The dancing
continued. “Nnnnngghhhhhhh!
Nnnnnnnnghhhhhhhhhhh!” This
went on for a surprisingly long time before it began to dawn on Kenny that this
was actually a problem. Maybe it
just seemed that way, because time can move slowly when your tongue is stuck to
a freezer drawer. I wonder if
Einstein ever considered that. In any case, when the reality finally sank in Kenny did
the smart thing and ran upstairs to fetch our mother. Now, the den being right next to the wooden staircase, we
could, even over our own moaning, hear Kenny’s steps as he scampered up and
within seconds we heard two sets of feet quickly descending. We also heard, quite clearly, our
fast-thinking mother shouting to us:
“Don’t pull! Don’t pull!! I’ll get some warm water! Just don’t pull!!”
Well, here we are
at another critical juncture in the story. Remember how I said I thought I was so much better and
smarter than my brother? Well, it
seems the same principle applied for both of us with regards to our mom. And
yet again, you see what’s coming don’t you? Did we care that she had an IQ in the near-genius
range? Of course not. We did just
what all young boys do – the exact opposite of what their parents say.
To this day I have
a perfect image burned into my head.
Tiny bits of pink flesh firmly attached to the blue-white layer of ice
that had held me prisoner a split second earlier. My next memory is sitting side by side with my brother on
the examination table at the medical clinic, having our tongues swabbed with
Campho-phenique, a magical concoction intended primarily for external
application and with which most of the younger generation are blissfully
unfamiliar. The swabbing was
repeated several times per day over the ensuing weeks. We knew we were finally healing when
the sense of taste finally returned. The irony of course is that if we’d had
any sense to begin with none of that would have been necessary in the first
place. Oh well, live and learn.
