The Slice There Has To Be A Good Reason For This Train To Deserve A Wave

What we have here is a failure to, well, you’ll see.

Debra Morgan and her 6-year-old son, Brandon, were watching a train.

“Wave to the choo-choo,” said the mother.

“Who is it?” asked the boy.

Little kids and flying: “A few years back, I traveled from Spokane to Portland on an airplane with my 6-month infant and 3 1/2-year-old preschooler,” wrote Pat Taylor. “As we settled in, Jeff pushed the button to recline his seat, leaned back and proclaimed, ‘Ahh, this is the life.”’

Linda Waddell reported that when her son, Chris, was 4, he was in a plane being buffeted by wind as it was about to land in Lexington, Ky. He assessed the situation and then said in a loud clear voice, “This is cool - is this the part where we crash?”

Agree or disagree: “It was also during the 1950s that the Pacific Northwest became a fully vested region of the country.” - from “Jet Dreams: Art of the Fifties in the Northwest”

Birds of summer: We’re partial to the Black-headed Grosbeak.

Things NOT to say to a pregnant woman: “This baby is going to be huge.”

“My friend was in labor for 36 horrible hours.”

“Stretch marks never really disappear, you know.”

“I have friends who kept those extra 20 pounds on for years.”

“Should you be eating that?” - from Parents magazine

Down the road: Mia Simonsen and her husband, Idaho natives who are both recent EWU graduates, wrote from Boston to report that they have now “done” Interstate 90. “The drive took us six days in a U-Haul without a cassette player,” she said. “We hope to be back in the treasured Northwest in five years.”

Genius crook: A Spokane reader told us about how someone swiped her Mother’s Day fuchia plant from her porch… and left a clear path of fallen petals leading right to the thief’s door. A police officer followed up, and the plant was returned in the middle of the night.

Wildlife management: A caller told us about her neighbor’s ritual of baking gingerbread and putting it out for skunks, who seem to love it.

Empire strikes back: “Every time you emphasize ‘Inland Northwest’ instead of ‘The Inland Empire’ you make yourself a bigger jerk,” writes Sam Wetterhus.

Today’s Slice question: What’s the best alternative to four-letter words?

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Drawing

MEMO: The Slice appears Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098.