The Slice: The Slice: Some queries really merit long answer

A well-dressed woman pulling a suitcase on rollers stopped me in a crosswalk near The Ridpath one recent afternoon.

“How safe is here at night?” she asked, speaking with an accent.

I wanted to give her a thoughtful answer. I wanted to list variables. But we were headed in opposite directions and the traffic light was about to change.

So I said, “Pretty safe.”

What would you have told her?

“Take a seat: I’m declaring Wayne Sanders to be the winner of The Slice’s Faded Furniture Contest. He has a beat-up chair that used to belong to his grandmother. Then his aunt had it. Then it became his. “It’s ugly,” he said.

Sanders owned it through four years of college in the ‘70s, if that gives you any idea what it has been through.

Everyone tells him to get rid of it. But he wouldn’t think of it. “It has sentimental value.”

“Two for Tuesday: Today’s theme is parenting.

1. Tell about a time when the presence of your children made you do the right thing out in public.

2. Have you ever been secretly delighted that one of your kids’ activities — something you were expected to attend — got canceled?

“Past its date: College student Katie Delderfield, who lives with her mom and stepdad in Spokane Valley, was making dinner recently. A recipe called for cornstarch.

“I go to open the box and, for some reason, notice the expiration date — August, 1985,” she wrote.

How long ago was that? “Shout,” by Tears for Fears, was a hit song.

“Slice answers: “Because I am a CPA and because I live in Spokane, Wash., people assume I am a conservative Republican,” wrote Mary Cayer. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Marjorie Carper, 79, said well-intentioned younger people assume she needs assistance. She doesn’t. “I’m not helpless,” she said.

“Workplaces that could produce a fetching swimsuit calendar using their own employees: Former patient Dale Dionne said the Veterans Affairs Medical Center would definitely be on the list.

“Great moments in grade school art: When Leslie Jaqua was in third grade, she drew a picture of a robin and gave it four legs.

“Warm-up question: In what Inland Northwest county are you most likely to be considered an oddball because you don’t own any guns?

“Today’s Slice question: If you had one of those poles upon which are attached pointer-shaped signs with the names of far-away places and the mileage to those locations, what cities would be on your pole?