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This column reflects the opinion of the writer. Learn about the differences between a news story and an opinion column.

The Slice: Three coins in the parking meter

Your attitude about the parking meters in downtown Spokane can reveal something about your personality.

Just answer the following questions and see for yourself.

Does the prospect of having to pay for metered parking bring out the militiaman in you?

Do you believe unmetered curbside parking downtown would result in an unfettered coming and going of freedom-loving motorists (and not people parking for 16 hours in front of somebody’s business)?

When confronted with the parking meters downtown, do you use the words “socialist” and “fascist” interchangeably?

Have you ever referred to the meter patrol as “storm troopers”?

Do parking meters bring out the constitutional scholar in you?

Are you aware that Spokane is not Hooterville?

When it comes to returning to your vehicle after your time on the meter has run out, do you refer to yourself as “The Gambler”?

When you boast that you never come downtown are you expecting contrite civic leaders to plead with you to change your ways?

Have you ever burned a weekday afternoon by going to court to challenge a parking ticket? (Full disclosure: I have, but in another century.)

Do people besides my wife who, in 1988, got back to their vehicle and found a ticket on the windshield even though a few minutes remained on the meter ever get over the injustice of that?

Do you regard free parking as your birthright?

Do you suspect the whole parking meters thing is a way to prop up STA by making driving a hassle?

Do you regard metered parking as taxation tyranny?

As an alternative to parking at a metered spot downtown, would you rather park in a pay lot, in a parking garage or at a location where it is not permissible to park?

How do you pronounce the word “government”?

Grade yourself: Your answers show that you are normal, at least in a Spokane context.

Warm-up question: Apple unveiled the iPhone on this date in 2007. How has that now ubiquitous device changed your life?

Today’s Slice question: The long-running PBS program certainly isn’t intended to be a community profile, but how do you think Spokane comes off in “Antiques Roadshow”?

(The second and third installments from last spring’s most recent recorded-in-Spokane appraisal session air the next two Monday nights.)

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Dance your cares away … Sunday is the anniversary of the 1983 debut of “Fraggle Rock.”

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