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The Slice: He sees you when you’re slovenly

Over the years, Connie Murray has sometimes chosen to hide Christmas gifts more or less in plain sight.

“My all-time favorite place, which my son will never live down, was the laundry hamper in his bedroom.”

Slice answers: “There can be only one answer to the question about the ‘Barber of Seville’ overture,” wrote Rick Koterba. “The picture (that comes to mind) is Bugs Bunny massaging tonic into Elmer Fudd’s head.”

Cindy Shepherd has a personal association with that music. “Reminds me of my brother David’s re-enactment of the Bugs Bunny cartoon, using our then-baby brother Jeff as a stand-in for Elmer Fudd and Jeff’s bottle (filled with orange juice) as hair tonic that he was massaging in. As I recall, neither Jeff nor the babysitter was amused.”

You make the call: Is this wise counsel or vaguely insulting?

Stan Hughes recently found this message in a fortune cookie: “Enjoy your own company. If you don’t, who will?”

That’s what it said. “My wife laughed so hard she almost fell out of the booth.”

Milk sugar by any other name: Jerry Hilton’s young grandson, Calvin, has some digestive issues. The boy recently explained that, at least according to his mother, he might be “black toes intolerant.”

(In 2005, The Slice mentioned a 5-year-old who declared that he was “black toast intolerant.”)

Slice answers: “Admitting that you remember lead tinsel is also admitting that you are now an official old person,” wrote Joyce Atkinson.

She remembers it.

So does Gaylen Wood. “If you grabbed a handful and squeezed, it became a metal ball and left gray all over your hand.”

Bruce Au recalls that if you placed a piece over electric train rails it would short the circuit and cause the train to reverse direction.

Florence Young remembers carefully draping it over cardboard when it came time to take down the decorations.

Today’s Slice question: How did you handle hard questions about Santa?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Readers’ opinions were mixed about whether the year-in-review family letter Christmas card can be something other than ridiculous.

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