The Slice: Children aren’t really obscene, just misheard

My friend Amber Parviainen was picking up some papers off the floor in her Spokane Valley second-grade classroom when she saw something that all but broke her heart.

It was a child’s note illustrated with a color drawing of two faces. Above the faces, written in crayon, was “Fuchr me” and “Fuchr you.”

“I was shocked,” said Parviainen.

Clearly this was a poorly spelled attempt at a sadly familiar vulgarism.

Now it would have been one thing if this off-color expression had been the work of, say, jaded fourth-graders or street-hardened fifth-graders.

But second-graders? What has the world come to?

Maybe there was still time for a corrective intervention.

“So after interviewing children individually I found out it was sweet little Hannah,” Parviainen said.

Here’s how that confrontation went.

Parviainen: “Oh, Hannah. I am so disappointed.”

Hannah: “Why, Mrs. Parviainen? I just drew a picture of Aidan and I wrote ‘Future you’ and ‘Future me’ above them.”

Oh. Future. Well, OK then.

“I love second grade,” said Parviainen, her faith restored.

Speaking of grade-school teachers who are friends of mine: North Idaho’s Carol Nelson has allergies and sometimes her sneezes create shock waves.

“One time, a student saw that I was about to sneeze and said, ‘Look out! She’s going to blow!’ ”

One-step tip on how to feel old: Consider that “Twin Peaks” first aired 20 years ago this month.

Slice answers: One reader speculated that sidewalk spitters are space aliens who have been banished from their home world because they are such hopeless morons.

And Ann Echegoyen weighed in on the question about counting up a lifetime of surgical stitches. “Stitches are so last century, and I’ve got a bagful of staples to prove it.”

Today’s Slice question: What food most frequently gets moldy before you get around to having it?