The Slice: A tall tale about a fabled pizza parlor

You can’t always believe your parents.

“When our boys were little, they used to like to take day trips to Chuck E. Cheese,” wrote Pullman’s Craig Parks. “One day they asked me if I liked to go there when I was a kid. I told them we did not have Chuck E. Cheese, but did have Granite E. Goat, a pizza place that had a big pile of rocks for kids to climb on, and that they would sometimes put a real goat on top of the pile, which meant you had to be careful when climbing. They thought I was full of it, so I told them to call my dad, who I knew would play along.”

It would be quite some time before the boys learned the truth.

Today’s story of being bitten: When John Bafaro was about 10 years old, he was bitten by a sparrow. “My best buddy and I had caught him in a makeshift trap. I reached in to pick him up, assuming (ignorance of youth) that little birds were friendly. Wrong. That little sucker latched on to my right index finger and it took much shaking and hollering to get it to let go, much to my friend’s amusement. It left a small scar that didn’t fade for over 30 years.”

Little known powers of Inland Northwest boat captains: “Many years ago a friend’s parents owned a fair sized cabin cruiser,” wrote Ken Stout. “On a wall next to the door into the lower cabin was a small sign reading ‘Marriages performed by the captain of this vessel are valid for the duration of the voyage only.’ ”

Let’s hope they were good ones: “My wife and I were taking our 2-year-old black and white Shih Tzu, Bently, for a walk at the lake,” wrote Norm Tesch. “We were going through the campground when a toddler came up to us and wanted to pet Bently. As she started to pet him three more little girls showed up to pet him too. With all this commotion going on, one of the girls said, ‘Your dog is growling.’ One of the other girls said, ‘No he’s not, he’s just vibrating.’ ”

Today’s Slice question: Would you want to see a magical printout of 100 nasty things said about you behind your back if you also got to read a list of 100 flattering things said behind your back?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Blake Ballard, John Weisenburger, John Petrofski and others knew that the Jimmy Stewart movie referred to in Sunday’s column is “Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation.”