The Slice: Must be one handsome pasta maker

Reader Sande Paulson noted that someone who looks a lot like me took a pasta-making class the other day.

She wondered if it was, in fact, yours truly.

It wasn’t. But I just love having a look-alike who is out doing interesting, appealing things.

When you consider the other possibilities, it could be so much worse.

“Re: Last Thursday’s Slice question: It is now clear to me that readers are going to continue telling me about their aprons until I more fully and unreservedly acknowledge that, yes, there are people who still wear them.

Cathy Nestor sometimes forgets to take hers off before she goes out and then people in stores come up to her and ask for assistance.

All the “women folk” at Betty Brandle’s family reunion last month received aprons.

Libbie Coleman owns more than 100.

Holly Smith’s mother, Pam, wears one when giving her dog a bath in the kitchen sink.

Carol Bagby and several others wear aprons when reading the newspaper to keep ink off their clothes.

Warren Hayman wears one – a Father’s Day gift – that says “Prepare to be … Smoked!”

Nancy Kiehn sometimes wears one as a dining bib.

And lots of Slice readers use one simply because cooking can be messy.

But Jan Hunt in Oldtown, Idaho, acknowledged that apron awareness is not universal. A store clerk once responded to her query by asking, “What is an apron?”

“Establishing credibility: Nancy Castillo was feeling alarmingly unwell. So she asked her visiting 11-year-old granddaughter to handle a phone call with a paramedics dispatcher.

Castillo heard the girl, Helaina, respond to a series of questions. One must have been, “How old are you?”

“Thirteen,” Helaina answered.

A bit later, Castillo asked the girl why she had lied about her age.

“Because nobody listens to an 11-year-old,” she explained.

“Career track: Kara Trail said her 4-year-old son, Andrew, has got to be the local kid who gets most excited about seeing a train. “After all, he actually wants to be a train when he grows up.”

“It’s rough all over: When Michelle LeBret’s teenage daughter, Ashley, learned that her parents were considering a trip to Jamaica that did not include her, the girl suggested that this would constitute a clear violation of the No Child Left Behind Act.

“Today’s Slice question: Do people who have been Neil Young fans since the late ‘60s feel superior to those who discovered the singer in this century?