The Slice: Take it outside

Some of the foods Lonnie Scott enjoys are treats his wife would prefer him to eat outside.

“She doesn’t like me to cook seafood in the house (and she’s from Maine!), and there are a couple others she can’t stand in the home,” wrote Scott, a retired Navy chaplain and pastor at Spangle Community Church.

“But the one she absolutely will not allow me to eat in the house is kimchi, the fermented cabbage and onion staple from Korea.”

(This is not the first time kimchi has come up in The Slice. Just last February, a reader, commenting on her husband’s fondness for jars of the pungent stuff, said “I just can’t get over the stench.” But back to Lonnie’s story.)

“I was stationed on Okinawa, and our neighbor in base housing was married to a Korean lady. When she would bring some kimchi to me I didn’t mind being outside too much. A cold winter day on Okinawa was 68 degrees.

“But here in the Spokane area, well, this photo was taken on my side porch in Spangle, and the outside temperature was 31 degrees. Do I get any sympathy here?”

Lonnie added a postscript. “My wife thinks I’m nuts. First for liking kimchi, and secondly for sending this info to you.”

Don’t fret, Lonnie. It’s a wife’s job to occasionally suspect her husband has gone around the bend. It’s one of the ways she expresses love.

Comeback: Here’s what retired public school teacher Sarah Jensen used to say to those who would suggest teachers had it cushy when it came to pay and vacations, et cetera.

“If teachers have it so great, why didn’t you become one?”

Today’s dysfunctional family dinners memory: “I lived with my mother and stepfather during my teen years,” wrote Nancy Chevigny-Dahlke. “My stepfather never spoke to me … ever. We would be sitting at the table for dinner (the three of us) and my stepfather would speak to my mother about me as if I was not in the room. To him, I was invisible. That was very hurtful to an insecure teenage girl.”

Apropos of nothing: A Spokane Valley friend enjoys annoying local Seahawks fans by asking them if they think any of the players could point to Spokane on a map.

Today’s Slice question: Ever danced in your kitchen?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Two percent of the women in Spokane look a bit like the late Frances Bavier.