The Slice: Memory fails on joke, lingers on shared laugh

So, OK, maybe some dirty jokes actually are funny.

“At least 50 years ago someone told my mother and me a dirty joke that we laughed ourselves sick over,” wrote Judy Layton.

Then the two of them forgot most of it. “We remembered the punch line, however, which was ‘I’ll do the dishes.’ So for years we would look at each other and volunteer, ‘I’ll do the dishes’ and then lament that we couldn’t remember the joke.”

Which is sort of funny, all by itself.

Then, a couple of years ago, someone sent Layton that same joke in an email. “I laughed all over again and thanked the person profusely for sending it to me. Just wish I could tell it to my mother who has been gone for 17 years.”

Today’s story of something a pet swallowed, featuring a feline named Lacie: “We had a cat,” wrote Scotte Meredith. “Around Christmas time, I saw the cat had a piece of ribbon (that curling kind with the ridges) that looked like it was stuck to her foot. So, being the helpful person I am, I snuck up behind the cat and stepped on the end of the ribbon so it would come off her foot. Well, it turns out it was not stuck to her foot, but she had eaten the ribbon and was in the initial stage of ‘passing’ it. When I stepped on it, it sped up the ‘passing’ process as that cat took off like a shot and about six feet of ribbon, complete with ridges, was quickly extracted.

“The cat got a big surprise and I got rubber gloves and disposed of the ribbon.”

Slice answer: The Slice had asked what a therapist would say about someone who watched a certain trio of Sunday night shows. “Well, Mr. Slice,” wrote Maggie Fritz. “I watch ‘Downton Abbey,’ ‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘True Detective’, and I am a therapist.”

Earliest Memories Department: “My mother bathing me in a sink and me splashing water onto a hot light bulb above the sink causing it to explode,” wrote Jerry Barnhill. “Not sure how old I was but must have been very young for my bath to be in a sink.”

Today’s Slice question: What proof do you have that living in the Spokane area does not define you?