The Slice: Unleashing that pent-up loquacity

Let’s start with a Slice answer.

What happens to people who grow up with a sibling who never stopped talking?

“They become dental hygienists,” wrote a reader in Mead.

Things that bug you about Spokane that don’t seem to trouble others: It annoys Tanya Jones when drivers leave almost a full car-length of space between their vehicle and the car ahead of them when stopped at a traffic light. “It bugs the hell out of me.”

When everyone is familiar with the expression except you: “When my daughter was just barely 18 – and not yet a coffee drinker – she got a job as a waitress at a little family restaurant,” wrote a reader who asked that I keep her name to myself so as to not embarrass her daughter. “A customer ordered black coffee, to which she replied, ‘Would you like cream or sugar with that?’ It’s not hard to guess what her question was when another customer ordered ‘pie a la mode.’”

In the matter of what to call the lake place: Tara Leininger’s sister married into a family in Maine and she subsequently confused Tara with references to “the camp” (a common expression in New England used to describe a lake home, which is often on what is referred to as a pond).

“In Montana you ‘go camping’ or ‘make camp’ but having a camp took some explaining.”

Gullibility Dept.: “When I was 9 or 10, I was eating a pork chop at the dinner table with my parents,” wrote Alan Liere. “I asked my father what the small gelatinous tidbit (marrow) in the top of the bone was. My father told me it was the pig’s brains, and I didn’t question him because my father was the smartest man in the world.

“Twenty-five years later, my wife and I were eating pork chops and I poked at the little piece of marrow tucked into the top of the bone. ‘Brains?’ I said. ‘This can’t be brains!’ I had actually gone all those years without questioning my father’s declaration.”

Warm-up question: Barry Bauchwitz has been called “Boompa” by his oldest grandson since the boy, now almost 13, first began to talk. Can you remember the 1962 movie in which a child refers to Jimmy Stewart by that same name?

Today’s Slice question: If ticks were capable of higher cognition, what would they be thinking as you and your tender-morsel epidermis came closer and closer during a walk in the woods?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Doug Burr said The Three Stooges have stood the test of time as role models.