Parents of 2013 high school graduates must be shaking their heads and thinking this was just yesterday.
If, after you get off the phone with someone with whom you are romantically involved, one of your co-workers addresses you as “Schmoopy.”
If you set a goal and start working toward it on Sunday, the day before Memorial Day, you will have 40 days to achieve it by the 4th of July.
Good luck.
Slice answers: Our question about “creative” spellings of standard-sounding first names prompted strong reactions. Most readers weighing in were vehemently opposed to unusual spellings.
We heard plenty of examples. But we have no desire to cause hard feelings within families or in workplaces. So we'll just pass along an idea from a reader named Sylvia.
She thinks first names ought to be recycled from the obituaries. That way, classic monikers such as Hazel or Herman would stay in circulation and not get totally supplanted by, say, Ashley and Justin.
No need to mention any names.
But can you think of a local business whose product or service simply does not impress you but about which you have mixed feelings because you like at least some of the people working there?
Well, OK. Not really.
But the SR columnist and author recently set up a web site to deal with the literary side of his multi-faceted life.
Apparently, though, it cannot be accessed from SR computers, which seem to regard it as suspicious.
Now I have not seen the site. For all I know, Shawn has pictures of naked ninth grade girls on it. Though I doubt it.
I suspect it is some sort of technical glitch. Maybe our computer system has something against people who have lived in both Idaho and Montana, as Shawn has.
But I have a question. It's about a word often used incorrectly.
Does the situation with Shawn's author/publishing site being out of reach to those at his workplace constitute irony?
I'm a Christopher Guest fan. And I'm not giving up on “Family Tree” just yet.
But boy, I don't know. Maybe his humor is not suited to half-hour segments.
The Richmond Flying Squirrels.
They used to be the…
Does any reference to flying squirrels make you want to say, “Hey Rock, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat”?
OK, please say Rocky's line.
The people who carry plastic bags but don't really pick up after their dogs are the same ones who drive around in vehicles adorned with kayak carriers or bike racks but never actually engage in outdoor recreation.
One of my colleagues confided that she had a thing about Jim Morrison when she was young.
This had come up in a conversation prompted by the passing of his Doors bandmate Ray Manzarek.
Alas, she never got together with the charismatic singer. She was left to ponder what might have been.
What kept them apart?
1. Geography. (My colleague grew up in the East, while California was Morrison's base of operations.)
2. Other people. (Morrison was involved with a variety of other women.)
3. Substance abuse. (Morrison had a drug problem.)
4. Age. (My colleague was significantly younger than the often shirtless singer.)
5. Timing. (Morrison died when my colleague was 3.)
6. Cruel fate. (Sometimes you can stare and stare at an album cover — a certain Carly SImon record comes to mind — and, no matter how hard you wish, your fantasies fail to come true. Darn it all.)
7. Justice. (My colleague would never say this, but she's too good for the Lizard King.)
A cookbook inspired by the way your family actually eats would be called what?
If you know only the Michael Bolton version, I'll just assume you are young and fell in with some bad company.
www.45cat.com
Warm-up question: Why is it that people who have traveled the least tend to have the loudest know-it-all opinions about other parts of the country?
Features writer Paul Turner is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review in the Features department. He writes "The Slice" column, which appears six times a week and produces general features stories for the Today section.
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