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The Slice: Shopping cart catcher’s skills came to near perfection


Prepare to see Martin Sheen in reruns of

Sometimes you see athletic prowess in real life. A tall, slender woman in a grocery store’s parking lot was pushing an empty shopping cart when she gave it a little shove and sent it rolling toward one of those cart corrals. But the cart didn’t go in a straight line. It veered and headed for a car parked next to the corral. The woman sprang into action. She moved like a big cat. In five or six ground-swallowing strides she caught up with the cart and stopped it. I gave her a 9.6.

• I realized I wasn’t meant to have an aquarium when …: “I accidentally dropped Sammy, my Siamese fighting fish, down the kitchen drain,” wrote Millie Thomson. “My husband borrowed a pipe wrench from the neighbor and, with brute force, opened the trap under the sink.

“Sammy was retrieved alive, but smeared for months with greasy black gunk. Sammy was the last fish I ever owned.”

“… the Nautilus sub from the cereal box, operating on baking soda, worked well in the aquarium but the fish didn’t,” wrote Jim Sisseck.

Three things I learned from playing catch with a dozen readers this summer:

1. Some people can resist the temptation to generalize about Spokane.

2. Some people have long memories when it comes to things that appeared in the S-R.

3. If you bonk a reader on the head with a baseball and she happens to work in a law office, her colleagues will volunteer to represent her.

Better late than never: At long last, the Bravo channel is about to show some “new” episodes of “The West Wing.” Starting Monday, the cable outlet will air the show’s fifth season, featuring the resolution of the kidnapping storyline.

Slice answer (things that fell through a crack): “I was in Miller’s Hardware to get a bolt matching one I already had,” wrote Mike Parish. “I pulled the sample bolt from my pocket — the same pocket where earlier I had placed my wedding ring so it wouldn’t catch on anything while I was working.”

As he extricated the bolt, Parish’s wedding ring popped out. It rolled across the floor and found its way underneath a fully stocked merchandise counter.

Three store employees wound up removing a zillion light bulbs and disassembling part of the counter to retrieve the ring.

“It’s the only time I’ve ever known customer service to go to such lengths that people were on their knees before me,” said Parish. “My thanks to the crew at Miller’s.”

Heaven’s sake: A retired pastor filled the pulpit for a vacationing minister at a local Presbyterian church Sunday. He began his sermon, “I am Jack Jennings and I approve this message.”

Today’s Slice question (for those who use wheelchairs): Compared with other places you have lived, how easy is it to get around in Spokane?

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