Police: Boy's tongue stuck to metal pole

HAMMOND, Ind., Jan. 15 (UPI) -- Police in Northwest Indiana said they were called to the scene when a 10-year-old boy stuck his tongue to a freezing streetlight pole.

Officers said the boy, a fourth grader at Field Elementary School in Hammond, mumbled to police that he had licked the pole after a friend dared him, The (Northwest Indiana) Times reported Thursday.

The boy yanked himself away from the pole before an ambulance arrived and police said they gave the boy's mother, who was described as "pretty upset" by the incident, instructions on how to care for his bleeding tongue.

"You'd think everybody in the country had seen 'A Christmas Story' by now," a police officer at the scene said, referring to a scene from the popular holiday movie depicting a child sticking his tongue to a metal pole. "Remember what happened to Flick."