The Slice: Maybe granny’s micro-mini left major imprint

Here are five possible reasons that have nothing to do with being hard-core religious that explain why a high school girl might dress modestly in 2008.

1. Parents have yet to surrender. 2. Nonconformity. 3. Girl in question has a more interesting take on sexuality. 4. Aversion to being ridiculous. 5. Saw a 1971 picture of grandma in a micro-mini.

•Setting the tone: One reader wonders if anyone else has started an e-mail with “Hello” but inadvertently left off the “o.”

•Renaming Pig Out in the Park: Henry Mroch suggested “Tallow on the Green.”

Other readers offered “Pigs Out in the Park,” “Bust a Gut Festival,” “Gluttony on the Grass,” “The Big Burp Bash,” “Scarf Till You Barf,” “Fall Foodfest,” “Summer’s End,” “Party in the Park,” “Grazin’ in the Grass,” “Price Gouging in the Park,” “Lost and Founder,” “Feast at the Park,” “Spandex in the Park,” “Taste of the Inland Empire,” “Alfresco Feast Festival,” and “Overcrowded Standing Dining Horror,” among others.

•Slice answer: “At the beginning of each school year I looked forward to freshly sharpened No. 2 yellow, Dixon-Ticonderoga pencils and, best of all, a new Pink Pearl eraser — not yet worn to a nubbin and without the later signs of graphite ground into it,” wrote Patricia Garvin.

•Confiscation chronicles continued: When Mary Dorsey was in eighth grade, she and a friend were prolific note-passers. Invariably, the subject of these furtive communications was boys.

For reasons that now escape her, Dorsey and her friend placed a batch of these notes in a metal band-aid box and buried it on the school grounds. Perhaps they thought future generations would reap the benefit of their insights on middle-school male antics.

“One of our classmates witnessed us burying them, dug them up and gave them to our teacher.”

That instructor urged Dorsey and her pal to knock it off.

•Instead of “If it’s not one thing, it’s another”: Several Spokane area families say “If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.”

In Matt Hellstrom’s family, it’s “If it’s not one thing, it’s everything else.”

Donna Lee grew up hearing, “What one of you kids doesn’t think of, the other one will.”

Shirl Foien’s family goes with “As Gilda Radner said, ‘It’s always sumpin.’ ”

•Ridpath memories: Jeanie Senior stayed at the hotel a number of times in the 1990s while working for a publication based in Portland. “The hotel rooms offered a great view of the B-52s flying over the city,” she wrote. “The multimirrored ‘disco’ on the top floor was a retro-hoot. On the other hand, that restaurant was the first place I was served Copper River salmon.”

•Today’s Slice question: In terms of atmosphere, where in the Inland Northwest is the best place to watch high school football?