The Slice: Not wanting to play bumper cars

You know how you can be zipping along on I-90 one moment and then come to a place on the interstate where traffic is stopped dead?

Sure. Well, how much do you worry that drivers behind you won’t notice the stoppage and will plow into your stationary car at 65 mph?

Let’s move on.

Vehicles you won’t park next to: Anything “jacked up” or anything with a ram’s head, said Tom White.

Slice answers: “My physically healthy and once brilliant mother suffers from short-term memory loss one expects with Alzheimer’s disease,” wrote a reader in Mead. “There have been many opportunities to redirect the frustration and anger that often descends into paranoia when things disappear.”

You know, accusations that “They” have stolen something and the like.

“One day I gently suggested that she had gotten so good at hiding things from ‘them’ that she may have hidden it from herself as well. She unexpectedly laughed and we happily (and successfully) searched for it. This approach works every time!”

Another reader shared this.

“My 87-year-old mother is slowly moving through the stages of dementia. In the earlier stages she insisted every misplaced item was stolen. After her money was ‘stolen’ several times I provided a heavy metal strongbox with a key for her and one for myself. When she called me and insisted the box was stolen, we searched together and found it under the seat in her shower. Her response? ‘See, I told you it was stolen – they hid it here and plan to come back later to get it!’

“Irrational beliefs cannot be reasoned away. Mom no longer thinks things are stolen. She no longer remembers what it was that is missing. I truly wish she were back to the place where she did have ‘stolen’ items. I’d go searching and when I found it, I’d simply say ‘Here it is, I found it’ and that was all that she needed.”

Re: Sunday’s column: George Goss, Diane Williams, Jan Brandvold and other readers said sometimes cooks who borrow prized recipes don’t get the same praiseworthy results when preparing a dish because they simply do not follow the directions and make various results-ruining substitutions and improvisations.

Today’s Slice question: Do you know anyone who seems fairly normal most of the time but then turns into this totally repellant personality when playing pickup basketball or softball?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. The Slice has a reader, Jan Fisher, in the mining/logging ghost town of Leadpoint, up near the Canadian border in Stevens County.