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The Slice: You might agree, and then again…
Check out this baker’s dozen and get back to me.
1. When Spokane residents loudly complain about the name of their city being butchered by those far from here, Coeur d’Alene residents make knowing eye contact with one another and sigh.
2. Spokane seems to be populated by a fair number of residents who don’t seem altogether comfortable with the idea that this is a city, not some overgrown rustic redoubt for grumbling old coots committed to the belief that if they don’t personally need some public service or infrastructure improvement right this minute, we should do without.
3. Teaching someone how to knot a necktie can be a bonding moment.
4. The Squirrel & Crow would be a fine name for a British-style Spokane pub.
5. Every 1.3 seconds, someone in the Inland Northwest says “What?”
6. The right coach can make youth sports a terrific experience.
7. Door-to-door proselytizing isn’t for those with thin skins.
8. If it’s your first time taking old cans of paint to the Waste to Energy plant, it’s a certainty that you will make rookie mistakes.
9. If someone was in a band back in the 1970s, you will learn this within the first five minutes after being introduced.
10. Extended families divided between Spokane and Seattle never say snide things behind one another’s backs.
11. Inland Northwest residents, like people everywhere, are amazingly willing to express polarized opinions about cities they have never even visited.
12. When someone’s pet is missing, it helps a lot to bring up the subject of coyotes.
13. If you assume no woman would object to being told her hair smells like cookies, you would be deeply, grievously wrong.
Advertisements for himself: “I just thought you’d want to know that spring has arrived at our house,” wrote Caroline Baker of Cheney. “The red-shafted flicker is back, jackhammering his mating call on our tin fireplace flue. The first time in the season you hear that noise it practically brings you right up out of your chair.”
Warm-up question: Are you thrown by the fact the narrator for the HBO series on GU basketball is the same guy who played the editor of the Boston Globe in the movie “Spotlight”?
Today’s Slice question: How often, after giving directions to momentarily lost strangers and then going on your way, do you find yourself thinking, “D’oh! I should have told them to …”?
Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. We hot chocolate snobs need to stick together.