The Slice: Power woes force some to just flush the day away

LET’S START WITH another toilet-flushing letter. A recent column included a grandmother being amused by a 6-year-old granddaughter who wondered if you could flush the toilet when the electricity is out. Since then, I’ve spent a fair percentage of my time fielding e-mails like this one from Susan Durnell.

“Dear Paul

“Finally I have to comment on a Slice item. It’s the one about little Josie in Tuesday’s paper.

“I teach at a small rural school in Stevens County. At Evergreen, no one would think her question odd or cute. Like many of the homes in the area, our school is on a well which uses a pump to deliver water to the building. Hence, no electricity, no flush (beyond that initial one powered by the water already in the tank).

“Even the kindergarteners have experience with this at school, and many kids have the same problem at home.

“Because we are rural, our power outages often last quite a while, so occasionally we have to close the school for reasons of sanitation.

“Since we switched from the old gravity/water system we have had to make up several ‘electricity’ days at the end of school.”

“Today’s Pet Peeve: It really bugs Pullman’s Linda Chalich when broadcasters refer to the day’s high temperature, the number of teams in Hoopfest or whatever as a “new” record.

A record is a record, she said. The “new” is redundant.

“A new record would be the calculation of something never measured before,” she wrote.

“Cardinals, lightning bugs, et cetera: A reader transplanted here from the East Coast said she misses the smell of the air just before a thunderstorm.

“Slice answer: I asked if, after a few years, kids get sick of hearing about being mentioned in this column for doing or saying something allegedly amusing.

Vanessa Constable wrote, “The answer is No.”

“My now 10-year-old daughter, Abby Constable, is still very proud of her Jan. 3, 2002, appearance in The Slice. She usually includes it each year in her Superstar display at school, calling it ‘The day I made the newspaper.’ ”

Back in 2001, Abby had complimented her mother on the way she looked in a Christmas-gift leather jacket.

“When you wear that coat, you don’t look like a mom,” she had said. “You look like a person.”

So I guess now she’s made the newspaper twice. And I trust her mom still looks like a person.

“Warm-up question: What happens when you drive the speed limit and refuse to go faster?

“Today’s Slice question: What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever seen someone do with fireworks?

(I’m regarding this question as home-study only. So you don’t need to send in your answer. If I even considered running a few of the responses, all sorts of sensitive souls would rush to accuse me of giving people dangerous ideas.)