The Slice: Not everyone wants to leave

I had lunch the other day with a friend who left this area not long ago to accept a great job in the Midwest.

There was not an equivalent opportunity here.

The new situation has turned out to be everything he had hoped. But you know, the guy has not one bad word to say about Spokane.

His grace and good cheer reminded me that sometimes when people leave this area, those left behind engage in a bit of backbiting about a supposed lack of devotion to the Inland Northwest, et cetera. But life isn’t always quite that simple.

Tracking down people from your past online: “My ‘greatest’ find was the neighborhood bully of my childhood,” wrote Blake Ballard.

He likened him to Scut Farkus from “A Christmas Story.”

“I had heard some time ago that he had spent some time in the pen for robbery. But when I first learned of the national website of sex offenders, I thought to myself, ‘Huh, I wonder if D—— T—— could be on there?’ ”

He was.

Slice answers: Readers reported their findings after The Slice asked what they might discover if they looked behind and under couch cushions. Here’s a sampling.

“Two Nerf balls (cat toys), one pen, one earring I thought I had lost, one Geico postcard regarding insurance rates, and one ball of yarn (also a cat toy),” wrote Barbara Cunningham.

“Dog biscuits that our dog Bing wants to save for a later time and then forgets,” wrote Barbara Keene.

“Dog hair,” said Judy Cocking.

From last Friday: The Slice had speculated about memories prompted by certain old summer songs.

Shelley Davis described precisely where 1970’s “(They Long to Be) Close to You” by the Carpenters transports her back in time: “Coming home from camping on a Sunday evening. Car windows down in the back seat of the family car. Sitting on our beach towels because we’d gone for one last swim before we headed home.”

Today’s Slice question: Does your dog bark at airplanes?