“A Christmas Story” Comes to Life … Two Indiana 4th Graders Double Dog Dare as Tongues Froze to Flag Pole

Life imitating art … the childhood right of passage of sticking tongue to a flag pole. The end result is always the same.

Well it was right out of Ralphie and “A Christmas Story”. The flag pole tongue freezing incident even took place in Indiana of all places. The very location that “A Christmas Story” was supposed to take place in the northwest Indiana community of Hammond in the 1940s. Two 4th grade boys, Gavin Dempsey and James Alexander decided to put the theory to the test in real life.

Ralphie’s friends Flick and Schwartz disputing over whether or not a person’s tongue will stick to a frozen flagpole. Schwartz gives Flick a “triple dog dare,” and Flick’s tongue gets stuck to the pole, much to his terror. A suction tube within the flagpole was used to simulate the freezing of Flick’s tongue to the pole.

Well, they do show “A Christmas Story” for 24 hours straight from Christmas Eve day into Christmas Day so why wouldn’t one think that kids would do their “double dog dare” right of passage and see if their tongues really would stick to a flag pole.

CHESTERTON, Ind. —  Two fourth-grade boys mimicking a scene from the movie “A Christmas Story” wound up with their tongues stuck to a frozen flagpole.

Gavin Dempsey and James Alexander were serving on flag duty at Jackson Elementary School Friday morning, with the job of raising and lowering the school’s flags. They decided to see if their tongues really would stick to the cold metal.

“I decided to try it because I thought all of the TV shows were lies, but turns out I was wrong,” Gavin said.

Karen Alexander, James’ mother , said her son told her he got the idea from the movie, which is based on stories about a boy growing up in the northwest Indiana community of Hammond in the 1940s.

Gavin Dempsey and James Alexander found out the hard way that it is no myth, a tongue really does stick to a flag pole in cold weather. The end result … the same as in “A Christmas Story”, a bloody bandaged tongue.

Billie Dempsey, Gavin’s mom, said a nurse called them to tell them the boys’ tongues were bleeding.

“The nurse asked them, ‘OK, who double-dog dared who?”‘ Billie Dempsey said, a reference to a phrase that a character in the movie used to dare another child to stick his tongue to the pole.