The Slice: How not to win the aphid war

SO YOU SAY you’ve got aphids. Or, to be more precise, one of your beloved trees has aphids. Well, here are some tried-and-true tactics guaranteed to not solve the problem.

1. Stand beneath the tree and yell, “Don’t make me come up there.”

2. Try to get the aphids hooked on cigarettes in the hope that this will cut short their plant-sucking little lives.

3. Tough talk about sanctions.

4. Aim your stereo speakers out the window and blast the yard with any rock album from the ‘70s featuring 10-minute drum solos.

5. Dare the aphids to run with scissors or go swimming right after eating.

6. Stare lasciviously at your neighbor’s trees and do your best wolf-whistle.

7. Place your hands on your hips and say, “G’wan, scoot!”

8. Citizen’s arrest.

9. Be seen sitting on your porch reading a book called “To Serve Aphids” and wait for the bugs to make the connection with that “Twilight Zone” episode where the seemingly helpful visitors from Outer Space possess a cryptic volume called “To Serve Man” and people figure out too late that it’s a cookbook.

10. Warn the aphids that you’re going to have no choice but to put them in time-out.

•Slice answers: When left-hander Jan Humphreys was in the fourth grade in Berkeley, Calif., back in the ‘50s, a teacher tried to make her feel inferior because she wasn’t right-handed.

That ended after Humphreys’ mother had a conversation with the principal.

Humphreys’ mom knew something about attempts to stigmatize left-handers. When she herself was a little girl in Texas, teachers tied her left hand behind her back.

When L.A. Batters was in grade school in San Francisco in the ‘40s, teachers put a belt around her waist and stuck her left arm under it. “Whenever I would reach out with my left hand they would rap my hand with a round stick about a yard long,” she recalled.

•Best cold beverage: When he was in the military and stationed in Mississippi, Walt Copley led a group of Boy Scouts on a long, hot hike in July. “Just short of an eternity after leaving, we returned to the base and found a pop machine,” wrote the resident of Sagle, Idaho. “I can still recall the taste of a bottle of Nehi Grape. I have never found another bottle of grape that tasted as good, and I have carried on a nonscientific survey for nearly 50 years.”

•Naming clutter drawers: “I call mine ‘The For Instance Drawer,’ ” wrote Darlene Rowland of Post Falls. “For instance, if you want birthday candles, plastic forks, a piece of string, et cetera.”

•Coldest water: The big lakes in Idaho got the most votes. But I got a kick out of a phone message left by a guy nominating Sullivan Lake, up near Metaline Falls.

“I jumped in once back when I was 17,” he said. “And I’m still trying to find out where my breath went.”

•Today’s Slice question: Are pen-on-paper letters home from camp a thing of the past?