The Slice: Stick that in your box and store it

Things Slice readers have stored in cigar boxes include …

Birthday/Father’s Day cards, old watches, military medals, ticket stubs, photographs, rings, old I.D. badges, newspaper clippings, beach stones/shells, expired driver’s licenses, matchbooks, bottle caps, old wallet-size sports schedules, postcards, old business cards, political campaign buttons, swizzle sticks, souvenir pens, shoehorns, yo-yos, troll dolls, love letters, a hole-in-one golf ball, old pocket calendars, old wallets, pre-1964 quarters and baseball cards.

Contest winners: Jim and Becky Monday of Spokane Valley each offered speculation about what George Washington would have said if he could have seen the state named after him.

Jim guessed he might have said, “Well powder my wig, what an honor.”

And Becky suggested, “Now that’s a name I could sink my teeth into … if I had any.”

The couple wins the GU basketball tickets.

Finalist Janet Culbertson imagined that the father of our country might have said, “Doesn’t it rain there all the time?”

And finalist Kurt Sears entered “Nice flag.”

Just wondering: It’s worth remembering that not everyone is even a nominal Christian. But do people who grew up as Catholics or Protestants tend to retain a reflexive rooting reaction when watching history shows on, say, Henry VIII, the Reformation, King James vs. William of Orange, or strife in Northern Ireland? (Even when a calm, reasoned assessment of the conflict might otherwise prompt you to side with those not of your childhood faith.)

Slice answer: “I am a nurse on the pediatric unit at Kootenai Medical Center,” wrote Debbie Kitselman. “We are a small unit with often only two staff members on, so it’s common practice for us to let each other know when we are visiting the bathroom so the other nurse knows she is alone. Consequently I tend to tell my husband as well.”

Today’s Slice question: How can you tell when someone has crossed over from being interested in family history to being obsessed?