The Slice: Their first kiss certainly rang true

Let’s start with a couple of kisses.

Judy McKeehan remembers the first time her husband smooched her.

“I had bells from India hanging on my front porch and when Mike kissed me, he backed into them,” she wrote. “He said, ‘It must be the real thing. I hear bells ringing!’ ”

It was, in fact, the real thing. “Forty years later the bells were still ringing.”

Mike died last year.

And here’s a memory from Larry Zimmerman. “After Sharon finally allowed me to kiss her, she said sadly, ‘I didn’t feel anything.’ We were married for 44 years.”

Sharon was killed in a car crash.

What kindergarteners like: “Cutting with scissors,” said one reader. “It gives them a lot of power.”

“Their teachers,” wrote Joyce Bagdon. “I was one for many years and the love I got from the kids was wonderful.”

What to call your significant other (Part 1): “My consort,” suggested Walt Aring.

A term Mike Altman has heard but does not endorse is “Shack rat.”

States of confusion: A friend who teaches grade school once had a pupil say that the three states of matter were Idaho, Oregon and Washington.

My friend suspects that the youth misunderstood and, instead of addressing the solid/liquid/gas question, was actually listing the states “that” matter.

Disasters past, present and future: In Steven Stehr’s family, they refer to the Weather Channel as the “Scary Channel.”

Nonconformity: Readers telling about their alternatives to watching the Super Bowl listed a variety of activities.

“A nap,” said Vera-Ora Winslow, for example.

But Bruce Au rejected the idea of not viewing. “The only acceptable alternative to the Super Bowl is going to your own funeral, and that would be under duress.”

Slice reading tip No. 72: If you see an item from Jody Hamilton detailing the entertaining antics of someone she knows, she is probably talking about her husband, a good guy named Matt Jones.

Today’s Slice question: Who around here has the best-looking friends?