The Slice: Maybe he carried H bombs when he was younger

For all you know, that doddering old guy ahead of you in the checkout line might have spent his days long ago flying over the Arctic Circle to reach a holding-pattern point just outside Soviet airspace.

So before you decide to get impatient with him, just ask yourself: What’s on your résumé?

A winter memory: Artist Karol Startzel shared this.

She starts out in her car and then, well, she can tell it.

“On this morning I left the house knowing I would need to belly crawl down our long steep driveway. The roads were very slick and despite my cautious speed I ended up doing a 180 and landed in a snow bank. I opened the door to get out and assess my stuckness.

“My feet swiftly left the ground and I landed flat on my back, knocking all the air from my lungs. As I lay there gasping for breath like a fish on the side of a river bank, I noticed a giant V in the sky. It was a flock of Canada geese leaving the area for greener pastures.

“I think they must have noticed my horizontalness and that’s when I heard it … goose laughter!”

Karol did not begrudge the geese their right to be amused. After all, she reasoned, her antics must have looked pretty funny. And besides, she was only stunned, not hurt.

“I am just really grateful geese can’t post things on YouTube.”

Warm-up questions: When you find yourself thinking “That person is young enough to be my son or granddaughter,” how do you do the math to arrive at which it is? When you notice that someone has written something on paper money now in your possession, do you always read it? Is there one personally meaningful object with which you want to be buried (when that day comes in the distant future)?

Today’s Slice question: It’s a week before Valentine’s Day. And perhaps you have a rather jaded view of the occasion, it having been marketed to death and trumpeting, as it does, airheaded perspectives on love that, frankly, make you grimace.

But maybe there was that one time, that one unexpected gesture.

What did someone who loves you once do to infuse Valentine’s Day with surprise, delight and romantic wonder?

Your story could win you a coveted reporter’s notebook.

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. It’s kind of fun being ho-hum about GU basketball when on the phone (or exchanging emails) with friends who live in other parts of the country. It isn’t what they expect.