The Slice For Some, A Car Is That Room Where You Get Ready For Work

We can’t be everywhere at once.

But the way it looks from here, STA bus riders tend to be less involved with putting on makeup, stuffing down breakfast burritos and doing heaven knows what else than people behind the wheel of cars during Spokane’s morning rush hour.

Once these names were popular: Spokane’s Gilbert Gander was recalling his classmates at the little school he attended in a small town south of Missoula in the 1930s.

In his class of 43 students, there were three Georges, three Alices, two Ruths, two Bills, two Carls, two Marges and two Gilberts.

We predict those names will be hot once again early in the next century.

Slice answer: Dordeen Elmore thinks the Spokane Film Festival would include a movie titled “How Green was My Grass Smoke.”

It says here: 1. TV cop shows attract exactly the wrong kind of people to real-life police work.

2. Bart the bear is a better actor than Elle Macpherson.

3. The idea that information found on the Internet is inherently superior to information in books is laughable.

Hearsay testimony: Heidi Amdahl is a Spokane nurse. She is used to taking responsibility for all sorts of important matters.

But when she was 3 years old, she had a different view of accountability. If something went wrong for which she might reasonably be blamed, Heidi pointed a finger at an imaginary friend named Kenny.

Sharon Shelton of Pullman, Heidi’s mother, still remembers. “No matter what happened, she’d say ‘Kenny did it.’”

Newman Lake’s Sean Barnes is an adult now, too. But when he was about 3 and his family lived in Kettle Falls, he wasn’t fond of taking the fall for the various minor offenses he committed. So he would offer a simple explanation for, say, a window being broken.

“Bad Benny did it.”

Benny was a make-believe person who lived on Gold Hill there in Kettle Falls, explained Sean’s mother Arlene Barnes, who now lives in Otis Orchards. “Bad Benny took the rap for an awful lot of things,” she said.

Thrown for a loss: We heard from several WSU football fans who were not at all amused by last Friday’s list of possible responses to the question “How ‘bout those Cougs?”

So here’s what we’ve got to say about that: Bad Benny did it.

Today’s Slice question: What would happen to life in the Inland Northwest if you moved away?

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Drawing

MEMO: The Slice appears Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098. Chris Rodkey won the ticket to the Greek festival by calling at 6:41 a.m. and reporting that there is a Spokane in Missouri.