The Slice: Somebody deserves a lot of credit

Let’s hear it for strangers.

Last Thursday a woman I know accidentally dropped a small purse in the parking lot of a grocery store on 29th.

There was some cash. It also contained her driver’s license and credit cards.

By the time she realized the purse was missing, she was already on her way to another strip mall down the street.

So she went back to the first store. And someone had found the purse and turned it in.

Tweaked titles of summer songs: “Hanford Breeze.” – Darrell Keim

“Hot Marmots in the Summertime.” – Sue Chapin

“Theme from ‘A Summer Lake Place.’ ” – Bill Mahaney

“Hoop Fun in the Summertime.” – Dana Freeborn

“Pigging-Out All Summer Long.” – Sarah Jensen

“Boys of Leo’s Photography” (grandson’s baseball team). – Nancy Chevigny-Dahlke

“Hoopfest Wind.” – Gordon Cooper

“Summer in the ’Kane.” – Georgie Ann Weatherby

“Gardening All Summer Long.” – Cecille Aldredge

The Slice items theme that won’t go away: “When we lived in Tennessee in the early ’60s, my boys would collect lightning bugs in Mason jars and put them in the freezer,” wrote Patricia Buckmaster. “The next night they would bring them out, open the jars and the bugs would light up and take off.”

The fireflies captured by Rodney Johnson when he was a kid in Kentucky did not fare so well. “We put them in jars and watched them glow like most kids,” he wrote. “But we also would pull their little glowing butts off and stick them on the headlights of our Hot Wheels cars to give them actual headlights for a few minutes. Then it was back to the jar for more headlights.”

But not all fireflies stories are from long ago. Darleen Beedy and her husband were back in New Jersey recently to attend a grandson’s high school graduation. Their dogs accompanied them on the trip back East.

Beedy took the pets for a walk one night as fireflies started doing their thing. The Inland Northwest canines proceeded to demonstrate that humans are not the only species capable of wondering “What the…?”

Today’s Slice question: Can you predict the narrative arc of your summer?