The Slice: Children master art of turning a phrase

Someday The Slice will stop printing examples of kidspeak that turned into family phrases.

Today is not that day.

In Kathy Thompson’s household, “By you” means spider. It comes from “There’s a spider by you.”

Napkins are “snapkins.”

And Graham crackers are known as “grand crappers.”

“We all use these words and my grandchildren will probably use them too,” wrote Thompson.

Asked and answered: “Why yes, I remember (TV’s) ‘High School Bowl’ very well,” wrote Diana Witherspoon. “I was on the championship team from Wallace, Idaho! Mike Pettit, Mike Love, Bill Johnson and Diana Uhl. We were so smart! Most of us are still in touch thanks to a Facebook picture my sister posted a few months ago.”

Diana shared that photo, taken on the quiz program’s no-frills set. It shows her team competing against four boys from Pullman High. All the boys are wearing a jacket and tie.

That was back during the 1969-70 school year, she wrote. “Mrs. Paroni and Mr. Kraemer were our coaches.”

Who nose how often this happens: Marcia Davis told about something that happened to her son during one of the truly cold days we have had this winter.

Her son has a construction job and works outdoors. “His nose was starting to drip,” she wrote.

So he sniffed.

“His nostrils froze together.”

You know, just in case: Ann Champagne is a regular reader of this column. But she said she had never been moved to write in about something until seeing the item submitted by the man tired of being asked to swap airline seats to accommodate family members wishing to sit next to one another.

“Did it ever occur to this gentleman that perhaps these people are deathly afraid of flying and really would like to sit next to their loved ones?”

Another reader, Jay Dudley, said the way to handle this is to check in early and have the airline employees take care of it before the flight. Which would work in the best of all possible worlds. But as you might have discovered, air travel and seat-booking sometimes fall short of that.

Today’s Slice question: How’s it going?