THERE ARE many things I still do as an adult which I first learned from my mother, when I was a child. I do it the way she taught me.

Like the way to use the egg shell to dip out the little piece of egg shell that fell into the frying pan with the egg.

Like the way to fold sheets or towels. Like how to hold the pillow with your chin while you put the pillow case on it.

One of the most important lessons she taught me was to put in writing and mail a formal letter of complaint, if I had a complaint to lodge.

Whether it was to a newspaper editor, the superintendent of schools, a teacher, or someone who promised to do something, but didn’t, she advised preparing a well thought out, well-composed letter.

That lesson is one all adults should learn. If you do not put your complaint in writing, you might as well not make it. When you send someone a letter—a piece of paper—they have to do something with it.

THAT’S HOW organizations are put together. They may ignore phone calls or e-mails, but a formal letter requires some kind of action. As my mother always said “be sure to keep a copy of the letter you send!”

My mother taught me good trip planning. Like her, I can tell you exactly where I am going before I leave. I have a road map in my head, one that I got from studying the maps before ever getting into the car. I know the miles between each town, and as they roll past, I check them off the mental list. My niece, Courtney, loves the fact that when we are on a driving trip, I can tell her to the mile how far we’ve come and how far we have to go at any point in the trip.

Good trip planning is more than just the map and the miles. It’s making sure you have all the things you may need—water, tissue, maps in the front; battery charger, fire extinguisher, windshield cleaner, tools in the trunk. It’s getting enough food to last as snacks, and figuring out which towns we will stop in. If you are taking kids, it’s having things along to keep them entertained and distracted. Mama taught me well to get little things, maybe even educational things, for kids to use for road distractions.

MOTHER TAUGHT me that good planning ahead of time saves time and makes life more efficient, in all things. I do not head out the door without thinking ahead of time exactly where I will go and in what order. I like to be efficient, and lack of good planning is an efficiency destroyer. My mother and I still like to mimic Barney Fife’s frequent declarative line from the Andy Griffin Show: “So, that’s the plan!”

Any time I find myself facing any kind of problem, particularly the big ones, the sooner I sit down and start working on my plan, the better off I will be. Once I start mapping out my options and the varying plans that might work, I find that the act of planning helps to soothe my concerns. My goal is to alter the things I can, and work with the things I cannot change.

My son is following in our footsteps. I remember the joy I took the time he came out of his room at age seven, with his checklist of things he wanted to take with him on vacation. My mother taught me by example, and I taught him by example. Twenty years later, his job is coordinating and planning at a University. He’s a chip off the old block, just like I planned it!

© 2009, Pappy Moore, All Rights Reserved.

Pappy Moore is a humorist, a native son of East Texas who still makes the piney woods his home.

oaktreefm58@hotmail.com

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