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The Slice: Bear with me
When, at this time of year, do you feel the urge to den up?
Soon, right? But remember, you need to fatten up before winter.
So if someone says something to you about that third piece of pie, just growl.
Denied admission: Bill Dittman shared this. “I have been trying to avoid the hockey puck discussion, but since you extended it (Monday) morning, I thought you might like to know that my favorite use for a hockey puck was to keep the roaches from climbing out of the shower drain in an East Coast dorm room.”
The thing in your past that keeps you from running for office (because your opponent would use it against you): Bill Bancroft said that would be “just about everything I did in the ’70s.”
Bill graduated from high school in 1974. “Great stories,” he said. “But not for public consumption.”
Be true to your school: “Our class at Shadle Park walked in the door as eighth-graders,” wrote Steve Heaps. “The first year the school opened it began with eighth, ninth and 10th. Parts of the building were closed off since they weren’t finished. My class of 1962 was the only class to be there five years, which is kind of cool. I think the first three classes were especially close because we started it all.”
Steve has made it a practice to attend funerals of long-ago classmates, even if they were not best friends and even if he hadn’t seen them in decades. “Do other readers do this? Or do they think it is weird?”
Grading conduct: “Back in the day when report cards were given out, we checked to see how many ‘Commendables’ we received,” wrote Patsy Wood. “I’m not sure we even knew what a commendable was.”
More evidence that age is relative: “I am a specialty contractor and have a client who wants me to install a bathroom downstairs next to his guest room,” wrote Tomas Lynch. “That way he will have quarters for live-in help when he ‘gets old.’ ”
He turned 90 last month.
Marta Bunch emailed this. “My 92-year-old mother still refers to my brother and me, both 64 (we’re fraternal twins), as ‘you kids.’ ”
Today’s Slice question: Ever smash someone’s pumpkin?
Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. The capital of the U.S. should be moved to, say, St. Louis.