June 29, 2009 in Features

The Slice: Let’s just keep it to the bear facts on this one

Paul Turner The Spokesman-Review

Tags: the slice

I’ll send a coveted reporter’s notebook to the reader offering the best explanation for how so many preschoolers and others survive sleeping with bears.

Slice answer (annual local event that interests you the least): “For my husband and me, it’s anything involving sports,” wrote Debbie Miller.

Checkout aisle ethics: Melinda Leavitt, an accounting major at Whitworth University who works as a cashier in Airway Heights, weighed in on The Slice’s recent grumbling about which grocery shoppers get to move to a newly opened checkout line.

For one thing, she noted, the second and third people in the preexisting lines often have already unloaded their baskets.

Then there’s this. “We can’t help the fact that some people at the end of the line typically hang back and wait for the extra checker to be called,” wrote Leavitt. “Once they see the checker ask someone ahead of them in line to move to another check stand, they become like hawks and descend on the new checker before the other customer can even get to the new line. I think this is terribly rude.”

No more apologizing for nature: One of Spokane’s TV news team ought to try “Tough Love Weather.”

I can hear it now.

“Looks like the Fourth of July weekend is going to be unseasonably cool. Deal with it.”

Or, “There’s a chance of rain in the forecast. Sorry if that has the potential to inconvenience you. But if you had a brain you might realize that we need all the rain we can get and that reducing forest fire danger is a tad more important than your stupid plans to cultivate skin cancer. Now here’s Skippy with 20 seconds of sports.”

Today’s Slice question: What’s your first thought when you wake up on Monday morning?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098; e-mail pault@spokesman.com. I’m OK with Spokane pharmacy counters installing machine-gun turrets.