The Slice: Be careful what you leave in the sun

If you don’t store your garbage barrel in the shade, what you have is a garbage cooker.

Let’s move on.

Why the bird in the front-porch nest objected to the guy in the baseball cap: “Many females have problems with baseball caps,” said Jo Pickens. “Good grief.”

Foul balls: At a San Diego Padres baseball game in 1979, Sue Chapin got hit in the sternum by a foul ball off the bat of Ozzie Smith, then a member of the Padres.

At a 2006 game in Kansas City, Sue Lani Madsen got smacked in the jaw by a foul ball off the bat of Mark Teixeira, then a member of the Texas Rangers.

Mom ears: “On a playground full of 100 screaming, laughing, shouting kids, a mom can hear her child start to cry,” wrote John Nelson.

And what about dads? “Dad’s superpower is endlessly deep pockets,” wrote David Townsend.

Dealing with hot weather: “Back in the 1960s I lived in Moscow and we often came to Spokane to visit my grandparents,” wrote Donna McMackin of Spokane Valley. “It was always a treat to shop downtown.”

One time, on a hot day, her father purchased chocolate peanut clusters at a department store’s candy counter.

“We had no air-conditioning in our Studebaker. So on the return trip to Moscow, my sister and I decided to hold the bag of candy out the window so it wouldn’t melt.”

You can guess how that turned out.

And Bill Mahaney remembers when air-conditioning had yet to make significant inroads as a residential fixture. “Movie theaters would advertise ‘20 degrees cooler inside.’ ”

Watch your language: “I read ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ in Mrs. Sherburne’s sophomore English class at Lewis & Clark High School in 1973 but listened to the audiobook a few years ago,” wrote Julie Smith.

She played it in her car. Because a certain word is used repeatedly, Smith would quickly roll up her window if stopped in traffic so nearby motorists wouldn’t assume she was some racist nut.

Today’s Slice question: About how old was the youngest person you have heard say “Oh, my God”?