The Slice : While you’re eating turkey, you may be getting the bird

If you have today off while others at your workplace do not, there’s a chance at least some of your colleagues bitterly resent this.

Happy holidays!

“Just wondering: We’ve all heard the expression, “dead in the water.”

But a reader who grew up hearing “dead in the shed,” wants to know if others learned that saying as children.

“Slice answers: “I discovered who my real friends are when I divorced,” wrote Eric Rieckers.

Cindie Webb said she learned who her real friends are after she fell off her roof one summer day. Colleagues from Davenport middle school/high school, along with a few students, came over and finished her roof repairs for her. “That is just one of the great things about living in a rural community.”

Retiree Bill Mahaney was a member of a college’s faculty back East. Then he became a senior administrator at the school, a person with some clout. Suddenly, lots of people wanted to have lunch with him.

A few years later, he left his administration post and went back to teaching, still at the same school. As he expected, the lunch invitations dropped off precipitously.

Then he wound up becoming a key faculty-union official. And wouldn’t you know it, suddenly he was Mr. Popularity again.

“Readers occasionally ask: How come we never see printed answers to certain Slice questions?

There are several possibilities.

1. I didn’t receive many answers and was not wild about those that did come in.

2. It just slipped through the cracks.

3. I actually did print some answers, but you had a life-or-death emergency that day and didn’t read the paper.

4. This is all really just a dream.

5. The question worked better as a discuss-at-home matter. An example of that would be the question about the one local election result over the years that had you thinking about packing up and moving. I did hear some answers, and found them interesting.

But I’m sure you can see how those responses could distort the tone of the column.

“Long ago and far away: Former New Yorker George X. Hale encountered novelist Norman Mailer in a bar. Hale jokingly asked Mailer when he was going to give up this writing jazz and get a real job. The famously self-important Mailer, who died this month, reportedly failed to see the humor in the remark.

“Today’s Slice question: Where is the Inland Northwest’s epicenter of nonstop dog barking?