The Slice: The Slice: Downloading the generation gap

Do you think young people ever tire of their elders’ assumption that kids automatically understand every aspect of each new consumer technology application or device?

Or do you suppose presumably tech-savvy youth enjoy their status as go-to computer consultants?

Let’s move on.

Few things are as frustrating to someone who enjoys getting all worked up about media-spawned arguments as talking to …: A) Someone who says “I don’t read that.” B) Someone who says, “I don’t listen to that.” C) Someone who says, “I don’t watch that.” D) Someone who says, “I have no idea what you are talking about.” E) Someone who says, “You have no idea what you are talking about.” F) Someone who says, “Don’t be such a dupe – getting saps like you all in a twist is how they build an audience and sell ads.” G) Other.

Slice answer: “Your question about lessons learned from fast food jobs got me thinking about what I learned from my first job as a paperboy in suburban Chicagoland,” wrote retiree Joe Brabeck.

Those lessons, in a nutshell …

1. Budgeting/money management. 2. Time management and personal accountability. 3. Salesmanship. 4. Interacting with adults. 5. The value of good customer service.

Speaking of lessons: “I never held a fast food job, but I cooked a little in the Navy and learned how to keep eggs on the griddle of a rolling ship,” wrote Steve Marque.

Which makes me wonder. Though you never know when a seemingly esoteric skill will come in handy … What did you learn how to do in the military that does not have obvious application in civilian life?

Area communities that would sound good if, like Walla Walla, they were named twice: Ione, Lind, Twisp, Wilbur, Athol, Hope, Worley, Tumtum.

Just wondering (in advance of D Day): Did the graphic realism of “Saving Private Ryan” render the more sanitized “The Longest Day” unwatchable or is the latter film still worth seeing for the moment when the German in the coastal bunker looks out at the Atlantic and first sees the invasion force approaching?

Today’s Slice question: What’s the essential difference between the West and the Northwest (and where would you draw the line on the map)?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. In the matter of having lived in a building on the National Register of Historic Places, Jacques Lemieux said numerous past and present residents of downtown Wallace could make that claim thanks to the Wallace Historic District.