When me and my younger brother were little, we were outside playing and digging in the snow with an old claw hammer from the barn. It must have been shortly after watching the classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

I got the bright idea to tell him to stick the claw of the hammer in the snow, then pull it out and lick it, just like Yukon Cornelius does, and maybe we could find gold.

Needless to say, tongue + ice cold metal hammer were quite the match and he was stuck instantly. Being as little as we were he panicked and ripped it off, along with a large thick chunk of tongue skin. Quite a bit of red snow that day…

I remember getting in trouble for that one. My parents definitely thought I tricked him on purpose, but I couldn’t have been more than 8 or so and definitely did not. I also remember that hammer sitting outside for the rest of the winter, with a chunk of tongue still frozen to it.