Be Direct To Duhkota

We heard from a Spokane woman looking for advice.

How do you get little kids to go home?

Here’s the situation. Her own children frequently have friends over. That’s all well and good.

But this mom has noticed that several of these visitors have a tendency to stay. And stay. And stay.

It’s not as if she hasn’t tried saying, “Duhkota honey, we’re going to be getting ready for dinner, so it’s time for you to go home. You can come back tomorrow.”

That just doesn’t work. Even after being instructed to return to their primary residences, some of these kids continue to hang around. And their parents don’t seem to miss them.

The woman who called us said she doesn’t want to complicate her own children’s friendships by doing anything that would permanently alienate these little visitors. But neither is she interested in operating a free day-care program this summer.

As always, our counsel is to wait for tears and then say “Hey, I’ll give you something to cry about.”

But perhaps Slice readers could be more helpful.

* Say it like you mean it: We heard about a 7-year-old boy who, returning home after a family trip, saw the city from Sunset Hill. Sounding very much like the movies’ Jim Carrey spitting out “Smo-kin’, ” the kid said “Spo-kane.”

* You know way too much about the lives of your spouse/significant other’s co-workers when:

a. you know their names.

b. you can list every personal-life psychodrama each has experienced over the last three years.

c. you are aware of their opinions about everything from home decorating to human rights.

d. you could write a 500-word medical history of each.

e. you think of them as implausible-but-entertaining characters in a soap opera.

* You know way too much about the lives of your own co-workers’ spouses/significant others when:

a. you know their names.

b. you know what turns them on.

c. you can do impressions of their state-of-excitement speaking voices.

d. you know their shoe sizes.

e. you know what their spouses/significant others really think of them.

* Here’s a thought: Maybe aggressive driving isn’t caused by the pace of contemporary life or other societal pressures. Maybe aggressive drivers are just jerks.

* Remember: Don’t pet grizzly cubs.

* Today’s Slice question: What’s your best water-balloon story?