A Winter right of passage for Canadian kids

An 11 year-old Kelowna boy can now proudly proclaim that he has earned his way into Canadian Winter citizenship.

Hell, we've all done it, right? If not, we've watched it happen to others.

What makes this typically Canadian event even more Canadian is that he was rescued, not by the fire department, but by a Mountie!

In sub-zero temperatures, don't put your tongue on a cold metal pole.An 11-year-old boy in Kelowna didn't follow that common-sense rule this morning.

A group of kids flagged down an RCMP traffic cop."Thinking at first that they were just being friendly, she waved back until she realized that one of the kid’s tongue was stuck on the pole of a stop sign," a police spokesman said today.

The RCMP officer put some water on the curious boy's tongue and freed him from the pole.

What isn't in the Vancouver Sun's story is the fact that the RCMP constable's daughter had also managed to stick her tongue on a frozen chain-link fence at her daycare centre.

This is why we start teaching chemistry and physics really early in Canada, lest all of our politicians become stuck to frozen metal.