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The Slice: Paper or plastic? Or a stick?

When you don’t want the grocery bagger to accompany you out to your car, it’s not really necessary to explain how messy your trunk is or go into details about how the dog waiting for you in the car doesn’t trust strangers.

Just say, “No, but thank you for offering.”

Unless, of course, the bagger won’t take “No” for an answer. In which case, it is permissible to gently beat that person with a stick.

Profiling: My friend Judy McKeehan said owning occasional Idaho resident Carole King’s “Tapestry” album in the original vinyl means you are quite possibly an aging hippie.

Just wondering: Considering all the places you have lived, where does Spokane rank in terms of sports obsession?

Slice answer: Stephanie Behne said one drawback of having a phone number that does not include a local area code is that some data-entry people here go ahead and assume the 509 and “then it just turns into a big mess.”

Let’s all just try to calm down and focus on our fries: After a special grade-school program, a friend and her husband were having lunch with their son at a fast-food place of his choosing. Having noticed the absence of the boy’s regular teacher earlier, they asked about that man.

“Oh, he’s in court,” the little boy answered, as if discussing the weather.

For a moment, it was silent except for the sound of gears turning in his parents’ heads.

But the boy soon put their unexpressed concerns to rest. “It’s nothing bad,” he said. “He has jury duty.”

Doubling up: “To make up for your misguided approach to DST, I will be moving my clock ahead by TWO hours,” e-mailed D. Neil Fitzgerald on Friday.

And in response to the reader who threatened to cancel the paper after sampling my grand sense of humor in a recent Slice, Diane Stutzman said her family would consider taking out a second S-R subscription to balance the scales.

Today’s Slice question (finish this sentence): If Post Falls is now the 10th most populous city in Idaho, then perhaps it’s fair to say that …

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098; e-mail pault@spokesman.com. Sometimes people who wheeze think they heard a cat.

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