The Slice: Sometimes, you’re better off without your eyeglasses

For Kendall Feeney, there are two versions of The Spokesman-Review.

There’s the one just like the edition everyone else sees.

And then there’s the paper she looks at before she has put on her glasses.

Earlier this week, Feeney glanced at the People’s Pharmacy feature and thought the headline read “Bassoon allergy could be deadly.”

A musician herself, Feeney could be excused for noting that little-known condition with a modicum of alarm.

What would be the symptoms? Could this allergy afflict those playing other instruments? Can you take shots for it?

Then she realized the headline actually said “Balloon.”

Oh. OK. Carry on.

Perhaps there were regional differences: In describing the forced shucking of a school-age lad’s trousers for reasons of social harassment, did you grow up with the term “pantsing” or was it known as “depantsing”?

Spokane, we have a problem: Steven Stuart took his children to the interactive “Apollo 13: Mission Control” show. The kids are 9 and 12. They all enjoyed it.

“We were seated at a panel with a phone, several lights and some switches. As the story developed, my daughters were required to call other areas of the mission control area. When they tried to, I discovered neither of them knew how to use a rotary phone.”

Talk about not being dialed in to 1970.

In the matter of Spokane area residents’ walking speed: Most respondents suggested it tends to be slow because so many of us here are overweight.

My own thought is that a fair number of class warriors in our area walk slow while at work because they imagine that hurrying signals subservience to The Man.

“Slice bag” defined: Mead’s Nina Elo said her family was already using that expression before this column’s latest foray into questionable taste.

“I had cut up an apple and took a small plastic bag from a drawer and said, ‘I’ll just put this apple in a slice bag.’ My son found this amusing, so we have adopted that phrase for everything we put in plastic bags.”

Today’s Slice question: To what extent would doing away with athletic scholarships restore sanity to certain aspects of American life?