The Slice: For serious misbehavers …

Editor’s note: Paul Turner has suited up and joined the S-R team covering the Final Four in Arizona. In his absence, the Today section is recycling a few Slice classics. Today, the column that ran on April 4, 2000:

Glenna Ainley teaches English as a second language at an elementary school in Othello.

One day a first-grader became concerned when Ainley referred to the school secretary. The little boy thought the teacher had said “cemetery.”

Slice answer: Peggy Wright once placed a banana in a briefcase that had many compartments. Then she forgot about it for six weeks.

“It was pretty nasty.”

Family Phrases Department: Because of something her son Noah said, those in Keli Cunningham’s family refer to eating toast without jam or jelly as having it blank.

Stephanie Wylie credits her brother for an expression that has lived on in her family.

The lad was at a store with his mother. And seeing one of those food-product demonstrations, he asked if he could go over and “Get a free example.”

In Joyce Weir’s family, “outer space” was known as “honor space.”

When he was quite young, George Conrad’s son Jared came up with the word “amazable” to describe something new and exciting. Family members still say that.

And in Cathy Kraus’ family, an icy summertime drink is said to be “thirst recrenching.”

Who says the paper never prints any good news: The other morning, Mark D. Tarr hit 13 straight green lights crossing the North Side on his way to work.

Local color: Larry Null’s dog eats crayons. “It makes pooper scooping a modern art event,” he wrote.

For the record: Kathy Fleming wishes people would stop saying and writing “North Idaho.” (It ought to be “northern Idaho,” she said.)

For the record, Part 2: Sam Thomas thinks it’s hypocritical for people hereabouts to complain about mispronunciations of “Spokane” and “Gonzaga” when locals have been known to verbally mangle countless American place names.

Warm-up questions: Are you still sore from doing yardwork on Sunday? Who is Spokane’s youngest jazz snob? How can you tell a boy is too old to be in the women’s restroom? What do birds say to you when you offer them nest-location advice?

Today’s Slice question: What’s an adult equivalent of a teenager being 100 percent focused on how he looks smoking a cigarette?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman. Honk if you learned to drive in a Corvair.