The Freezer in the Den

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.