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The Slice: How to tell people are old

Paul Turner (Dan Pelle / The Spokesman-Review)

Lynn Jones shared a nature story.

“My wife likes to feed the ducks. We put out chicken scratch and they fly in. This happens every autumn and the ducks sometimes use our house roof as a spot to land on before dropping down to eat.

“One Saturday morning our daughter said she was hearing noises coming from inside one of our two upstairs chimney chambers. We all heard the noise and opened both our upstairs fireplaces and poked around hoping something would come out. Nothing did, so we forgot about it.

“We were gone for about four hours and when we returned we couldn’t figure out where the white specks on the living room rug came from. There was also a feather that my wife picked up and tossed.

“We settled in for a TV evening. I went to our bedroom for some reason and discovered a female mallard waddling around. We got all excited and finally caught up to her in the bathroom. Let her go and away she flew.”

How to tell people are old: Sue Riener’s 6-year-old grandson offered this insight.

“I was taking him to school one day, and remarked that he needed to quit growing up as it was making me older. He commented that he could not stop it, but I shouldn’t worry because I wasn’t old. I asked how he knew, and he said, ‘You don’t have those fingers that look like scary tree branches, and you don’t walk with those little baby steps like old people do.’ After a very long, thoughtful pause he then said, ‘But sorry Grandma, Grandpa’s already there.’ ”

Heyday of cruising Riverside: “For me the year was 1973,” wrote Kevin Fletcher. “My older brother, 19, had a classic ’69 Camaro. I asked him what was so neat about cruising Riverside. He said ‘I’ll take you down there, but you have to sit on this stack of phone books so you will look older.’ I was hooked and spent many weekend nights cruising Riverside when I got older.”

Rick McCay thinks cruising Riverside might have peaked in 1975. “That seemed to be the year the police had the most paddy wagons (we called them party wagons) down there. They were everywhere.”

Today’s Slice question (for Gem State residents): How do people in other parts of the country respond when you mention being from Idaho?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. How many distinctive features can you name that helped make the Schwinn Sting-Ray bike one of the cultural breakthroughs of the 20th century?

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