The Slice: Do you have a monopoly on rambling?

There are two kinds of people.

One excels at teaching others how to play board games, card games or whatever. They start with the foundational basics and gradually get more specific. The other kind rambles incoherently and leaves the newbie confused.

Which are you?

In the matter of what 6-year-olds like to eat: Ann Echegoyen suggested that my question had it backward. “It isn’t what children like, it’s the attitude that parents have taught them,” she wrote. “My husband and I had always enjoyed finding and eating new and different foods and the kids were just as enthusiastic.”

Several other responding readers mentioned mac and cheese.

Slice answer: “One of the dumbest things I ever did was have an intimate relationship with my son’s father,” wrote Terry Martin. “However, had I not, I probably wouldn’t have the most caring son in the world. My son, Jon, has brought so much fun, joy, anxiety, exasperation, happiness and awe to my life. I wouldn’t change a thing. He has grown into a wonderful adult and I thank God every day for him.”

Today’s outhouse story: When he was about 10 years old, Tony Steffen and several friends in their small Iowa town spent Halloween night pushing over outhouses.

Steffen, who is 87, recalled that one particular outhouse turned out to have an occupant. It was an elderly woman who understandably reacted to the rude surprise by screaming. Steffen and his companions ran. “And we never got caught,” he wrote.

I phoned him at his home in Spokane Valley and asked what would have happened if they had been apprehended.

“Oh gosh,” he said. “We would have gotten our asses beaten.”

Re: Sunday’s Slice: It had not occurred to me that my idea about establishing New Spokane in Australia would evoke images of the 1978 Jonestown massacre. But Diane Canady said she hopes she doesn’t see me buying up all the Kool-Aid-like drink-mix powders in grocery stores before any mass migration.

Today’s Slice question: What do you listen to while exercising?