The Slice It’s Personal Growth Season For Many A Spokane Man

In the Inland Northwest, October 1st is the unofficial start of Maybe I’ll Grow a Beard Season.

As always, each man has to make his own decision. (We’re pretending for a moment that wives and girlfriends do not have absolute veto power.) But everyone can join in the pre-winter spirit of Beard Season by offering reassuring comments to guys going through those first difficult weeks of whisker-sprouting.

“Got the mange?” has always been one of our favorites. But we’re sure you can think of your own special words of encouragement.

It seems to us that: 1. We’re probably not the first to have thought we were hearing someone being hurt in downtown Spokane and then discovered it was just a street singer performing. 2. There are worse things than having Helen Hunt’s picture on the sides of STA buses. 3. If you see people sniffing their fingers after shaking hands with you, maybe you’ve overdone it on fragrance-application. 4. Bill Murray was seldom funnier than in 1981’s “Stripes,” on TNT tonight. 5. If you actually tried to pay a dollar for a second copy of The Inlander, as the publication instructs readers in small type, the store clerk would be utterly mystified. 6. You know you’re in the West when you see political ads featuring the candidate carrying a gun. 7. In the Spokane area, quilters tend to be good-looking. 8. It can’t be true that “next month” means November. 9. You know you’re getting old when 15 percent of your conversations deal with dental problems. 10. There’s always somebody whose roof is in even worse shape than yours.

Today’s Slice question: A few days ago, we were standing behind a woman who was being helped at a Spokane airport ticket counter. She was going to Seattle, then Memphis. The ticket agent asked her “Are you going to see Elvis’ house?”

She wasn’t. But it made us wonder.

At airports around the country, what’s the most common question asked of people headed for Spokane?

(The best answer submitted in writing - mail or fax - by 5 p.m. Friday will win some Slice reader a book of “Dilbert” postcards. The runner-up will receive a copy of the paperback, “The Seinfeld Universe.” And just so you’ll know. “Why?” will not be the winning answer.)

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Drawing

MEMO: The Slice appears Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098. We’ll award two tickets to this week’s Greek Dinner Festival at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church to the first reader who calls and recites any line spoken by Dustin Hoffman in 1970’s “Little Big Man” - the movie we took Susan Morgan to see on our first borrow-the-car date.