The Slice: Some souvenirs don’t bring back great memories

OK, maybe it’s not the greatest souvenir of all time.

But Gail Horton Palumbo still has her ticket to see Jimi Hendrix at the Spokane Coliseum in 1968.

Actually, she has two because her date stood her up and neither ticket got used. (She was too young to have a driver’s license, so the deal was she would get the tickets and he would drive.)

Her theory? The guy lived in Spokane and he must have decided he didn’t want to drive all the to Airway Heights to pick her up. “Never heard from him again.”

Falling asleep at work: “During intership at Cook County Hospital in Chicago many years ago, I fell asleep while holding a retractor during a multi-hour surgery,” wrote Dr. Tom Kearney. “Nudge from a nurse settled that, and it only happened once.”

Years before he was a teacher, Vince Eberly worked at a movie film processing lab. Once during a marathon session, he decided to lie down on the floor in an editing room, to try to take a nap. He awoke when a mouse bit him on the face.

Vince saw the rascally rodent scamper away.

An aroma triggering a memory: “I grew up in Spokane and was very close to a wonderful family whose dad smoked a pipe,” wrote Dee Hargitt.

Years later, when Dee was with her children at Walden Pond in Massachusetts, a whiff of pipe smoke all but transported her back to Spokane.

Re: Punishing Bloomsday cheaters: “Before heart surgery in 2010 I always trained hard for Bloomsday,” wrote Steve Heaps. “Once, on heart medication, I finished 11th in my age group, one place away from a coveted medal. Years later the 10th place finisher was banned after being videotaped jumping from the sidewalk into the middle of the race, which he had done for years. I wish I believed in Hell so there would be a special place for him and the East German who cheated Don Kardong out of Olympic bronze. Instead, I can only hope the cheater becomes afflicted with the fly larvae in the private parts the Ugandan convert kept yelling about in ‘The Book of Mormon.’ ”

Today’s Slice question: Do your elbows look about the the way you would expect at your age or are they too horrible to contemplate?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Shan Kelly of Colfax was the first with the correct answer about Annette Bening playing onetime Spokane resident Virginia Hill in the Warren Beatty movie “Bugsy.”