My lips are sealed, but yes, it's another sticky situation

Admittedly, I've done more than my share of stupid things in my life that have resulted in some weird injury or unintended consequence.

Sometimes an innocent party has been victimized by my stupidity. Like the time I cast a Jitterbug fishing lure into overhanging branches along the Oakalla Lake shoreline.

Much to my father's chagrin, when I yanked that thing out of the trees, it came flying straight back at the boat, impaling its treble hooks into Dad's forearm. Geez, I didn't know he even knew such language.

Mostly, though, I have borne the punishment for my own idiocy. Like the time I decided to jump off the pier at Lake Batavia rather than climb back down the ladder to the beach.

Should have looked out below. The murky water there was about a foot deep with a muddy bottom. When I landed feet first, I simultaneously sprained both ankles. Fun summertime stuff when you're 12, I'll tell you.

But all that pales in comparison to the stupid human trick I pulled Sunday in the friendly confines of my own home. That I'm even able to talk about my latest escapade is nothing short of a miracle.

Trying to fix a little issue with my favorite pair of shoes, I picked up a tube of Super Glue gel at Dollar General and decided to improvise on my old Rockport loafers.

Carefully laying out an unwanted section of the Sunday Star on the kitchen table, I set the old shoe on top and applied the Super Glue. But this isn't "set it and forget it," as Ron Popeil likes to boast.

Squeezing and holding were required here, one hand in the shoe, one on top, index finger applying the crucial pressure.

Holding that position for about 90 seconds (with a bum rotator cuff no less), success seemed at hand. That is, until I felt a little tickle under my nose and instinctively my index finger obliged with a little horizontal rub.

Before I even realized what I had set in motion, I had transferred Super Glue to my upper lip. And when I automatically reacted to the odd sensation there with a little swipe of the tongue, Super Glue was suddenly not only on my lip, but the tip of my tongue and my front teeth as well.

For good measure, the shoe was stuck to the newspaper, which had adhered to the tabletop.

My mouth felt all gritty, like I'd just downed a sand-filled smoothie. The backs of my teeth felt like stucco to my now-tender tongue.

Grabbing a nearby bottle of water, I rinsed and spit, just like any good boy at the dentist. But it didn't help. Lip, tongue and teeth still carried the telltale signs of a Super Glue catastrophe.

A big swig of pop didn't help, even though they say Coke will eat the rust off neglected bolts and caked corrosion off gunked-up battery terminals.

What else have I got, I wondered, panic mode setting in. Milk. Creamer. Pom juice. Pickle brine. Yeah, pickle brine.

It's like my favorite comic strip philosopher Dilbert often said, "There's nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot."

But as I held that jar to my lips, my own sensibilities called my bluff. Nope, not drinking that stuff, not even to restore feeling to my lips and tongue.

A quick check of the Internet didn't offer much other encouragement.

Seems if you accidentally (like you would do it on purpose?) glue your fingers (or other body parts, I assume) together, one suggested remedy is to slice them gently apart with an Xacto knife.

Now Xacto knives and I don't have a real good history.

Back when I was about 11 or 12, I was trimming a plastic model car piece at my buddy Bobby's house down the street when that sharp, thin blade found its way into my left leg, a little above the knee.

That wasn't the last of my Xacto adventures.

Those knives were once vital to newspaper paste-up operations before computers commandeered all page make-up. At my first real job, I was in charge of sports make-up while dating the young woman whose job it was to wield an Xacto and put together my pages.

It is important to note that almost everyone smoked at work back then, so our heroine had a cigarette tucked between two fingers as she wielded her knife. She's had also kicked off her sandals to work barefoot as we put the paper to bed late one night.

Let's just say a misguided finger (not a socially unacceptable one, but misguided nonetheless) was intended to point out where I wanted a certain story to go. Just as I pointed, she withdrew her hand from the page, searing the back of my wrist with the business end of a Marlboro.

With slapstick choreography The Three Stooges would have loved, I jumped backward, stepping on her shoeless toes. That, in turn, produced a flailing of her Xacto-armed hand that embedded the knife blade in my left arm.

Suffice it to say, that pretty much killed any further dating possibilities with Kathy the Impaler. And I'd be lying if I didn't wonder later in life if she weren't related to Lorena Bobbitt.

So, no, I wasn't about to put an Xacto blade anywhere near my lips or tongue, which had now given in to a strange numbness.

Yep, this had to be how poor old Flick felt when he stuck his tongue to that flagpole in "A Christmas Story," I'm guessing. Foolish and helpless, a nice one-two punch to the gut.

Apparently, as I learned via the Internet, nail polish (acetone) will cut Super Glue. Of course, I wasn't about to do a shot of nail polish either.

I just kept pursing my lips, scraping them over my teeth and licking them with my tongue like some crazed house cat.

The backs of my teeth seemed like sandpaper as I glided the tip of my tongue over them.

But eventually all that created enough friction so that coupled with the non-stop liquids I'd consumed, I got myself back to normal (at least normal as we know it).

Since then, bits of Super Glue have been coming off in tiny spheres of clear plastic, ending up on my tongue when least expected.

All this has taught me a valuable lesson though.

Mother always warned, "Don't put that in your mouth, you don't know where it's been."

Trust me, I know where it's been all right. It's how it got there that was my real problem.