The Slice: He proved his salute carried weight

Perhaps I like this story because my late father was once an Air Force officer with a young family.

Or maybe it’s just funny. You make the call.

Years ago, Davenport’s Jan Stone and her husband, a newly commissioned Air Force second lieutenant, were walking on a base in Nebraska with their two young daughters.

Stone carried the baby while her husband – in uniform at the time – held a hand down so the toddler could grab his fingers as best she could.

The family encountered a senior officer. Reflexively, Stone’s husband moved to snap off a salute.

One problem. The little girl still held his hand. So when he attempted to jerk his right arm up to make the proper military-courtesy motion, he lifted the kid right off the ground.

“Her grip was amazing,” said Stone.

She remembers that the senior officer got a big kick out of the scene. “He saluted and had a huge grin.”

Kidspeak that stuck: “Family history has it that, as toddlers, my dad couldn’t pronounce his little brother’s name, Sivert,” wrote Debbie McMurtery. “It came out as Teedert. My uncle, in return, couldn’t say dad’s name, Tommy. It was Toddy. And so it was, for their entire lives, everyone in the family called them Teed and Todd.”

Some things don’t change: After listening to a 20-something guy talk at some length about his pursuit of a fetching young woman living in his apartment complex, I asked what he had planned for their first date.

“Dinner and a movie,” he said.

Warm-up questions: How do you respond when people with whom you are doing business spend a lot of time talking about their problems and why they cannot do what they promised? If a ghost inhabited your home, who would it be and what would he/she want? When did you really realize that you had married the right person?

Today’s Slice question: How many people have seen you naked?

(When coming up with your tally, don’t forget communal showers in high school, the military or whatever. And your streaking adventures in the 1970s. Oh, and certain kinds of medical exams. And strip poker.)