The Slice: Cheap people probably aren’t cool

I‘m not saying people in Spokane are cheap.

OK, maybe I am.

But in any event, it has come to my attention that an ever-increasing number of motorists around here decline to use their car air conditioners because turning them on can be bad for gas mileage.

They would rather sweat it out than invite additional expense.

“Just wondering: When you went to your spouse’s high school reunion, did anyone there mistake you for one of their fellow graduates?

“Slice answer (intercepted greetings): About 25 years ago, then-congressman Tom Foley was visiting the newspaper.

A friend of mine looked up. But he saw reporter Tom Sowa.

“From halfway across the newsroom, I shouted ‘Hey, Tom!’ ” he recalled.

The future Speaker of the House, whom my friend had never met, heard the greeting.

“Foley, thinking I meant him, smiled broadly and headed my way. I was so embarrassed. All I could muster was something about how’s your summer going.

“Foley handled the moment with great poise, asking how things were with me. He let me out of the awkward moment, saying something like ‘You’re probably on deadline so I’ll let you get back to work.’ “

“The business negotiation skill most useful in the rest of life: “I would nominate real LISTENING, as opposed to just HEARING,” said Spokane Valley’s Gary Smith.

“Favorite career memento: “My retirement papers,” wrote Slice reader Dan Grothe.

“For the record: I’m compiling a list of local dessert-makers who have challenged my assertion that there aren’t many people around here who can make a decent pie crust.

“Slice answer (not rushing to unpack): Santo Marzocca and his wife, Donna, got home from an Alaskan cruise on July 16.

“You guessed it,” he wrote. “Her luggage is still packed.”

He said she reasons that it just makes sense to leave things the way they are, so she’ll be ready for the next trip.

“Warm-up questions: Do you have any slightly addled acquaintances in other parts of the country who can’t remember that you live in Spokane, not Seattle, or can’t correctly pronounce the name of this city? At what point do you give up on correcting them?

“Today’s Slice question: The other day, as I was checking in before a long flight, a friend who works at Spokane International Airport took the liberty of upgrading my seat assignment from steerage to first class.

I felt like one of those people given special courtesy cards by certain law enforcement agencies. You know, the cards that, when presented to an officer, supposedly get you out of a speeding ticket.

So today’s question is a complete-this-sentence exercise.

“It really pays to have friends who are…”