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Keep Something in Reserve

One thing I learned from my father when I was very young was to always keep something in reserve. He lived this in many ways and I believe he meant it in those many senses. Don't push yourself beyond your limits keep something in reserve; save for a rainy day; do your best joke last; "don't drop your candy in the lobby" (an inside joke that all salesmen know...meaning don't tell everything you know about your product in the first five minutes of the sales call, listen, wait, keep you candy in the jar until you know what they want); save your ammo; make her happy before you are; and this list goes on and on.

My dad had one particularly useful way of keeping something in reserve that he taught me sixty years ago and I'm still doing it today. It was after a Cub Scout meeting on a wintery Saturday afternoon, probably in Kentucky (I can't remember where). My dad and I were supposed to get milk at the grocery on our way home. Dad remembered the milk but when we got to the store had forgotten the money mom had put out. What to do in the pre-ATM era? My dad didn't like to make mistakes and especially didn't like to admit making them (his son doesn't either). He didn't say a word about forgetting the money or try to make this any kind of object lesson for me. I just watched him take off his shoe, get out a tattered old piece of waxed paper, unfold it and take out a one dollar bill. He paid for the milk (a gallon of milk was less than a dollar then, and a dollar could also buy five gallons of gas.) Then we walked home agreeing in silence to the bond that we wouldn't tell my mom. We got home, he pocketed the dollar mom had left on the dresser (which later went back in his shoe) and everybody was happy.

Ever since that day nearly sixty years ago I've kept something in reserve. It started out being a quarter because a dollar was way too much for me back then. These days it's my emergency $20 stashed in a hidden pocket of my wallet, and sadly it will still only buy you five gallons of gas.

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