The Slice: Making applesauce the messy way

Here’s what you need if you plan to hit a bunch of discard apples with a baseball bat.

1) A lot of open space with no structures/windows.

2) Hard fruit.

3) A towel for wiping yourself off after you have exploded a few.

4) Ability to provide your own play-by-play. “Hobbs hits it deep … that’s way back … waaaaay back …”

Symptoms of the dreaded “newspaper” virus: “Well, of course, as any kid can tell you, the symptoms are to be black and white and read all over,” wrote Su Sawyer.

Nurse Chris Harper, who suggested the same symptoms, said the newspaper virus should be fairly easy to diagnose.

Kent Scanlon, Jamie Breedlove and others also named those symptoms (with some going with “read” and some choosing “red.”)

But Glenn Winkey had another idea. “The sufferer’s hand and fingertips turn unexpectedly black.”

Cindy Matthews offered this. “Hundreds of tiny cuts on fingers are blackened from newspaper ink, followed by swelling and respiratory distress from rubber (band) allergy.”

Found on the desk of someone who passed away: “When my father-in-law died unexpectedly on 8/29/89, we traveled to Ohio for his funeral,” wrote Francie Radecki.

On his desk was a red Matchbox toy car, still in its box. Francie’s father-in-law had written “NATHAN” on the box.

“Nathan is our third son. He was 2 years old at the time. When he moved out, he took that car with him – still unopened with Grandpa’s handwriting fading a bit.”

Slice answers: The subject was unusual requests from your boss, and Bonnie Wheat had one.

Once, years ago, her boss asked her to come in to the office on Labor Day and type up his divorce papers.

Trudy Zaborski remembered when her boss would have her take jewelry or whatever had been left at his bachelor pad and deliver it to his most recent date’s workplace.

Betty Brueske recalls a time her boss asked her to hire an “escort” for a visiting big-shot businessman.

The quotation marks are Betty’s, so I suppose we can assume she and her boss had an understanding about what that meant.

Re: Back-in angle parking: “Deliver us from newfangled ideas from dreaming city planners,” wrote Esther Gilchrist, an Idaho resident.

Today’s Slice question: So what’s it like to have a first name your parents or parent thought was “creative” or “original” now that you are in your late 20s?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. The start of generator-stealing season is almost here.