Plan Ahead
My husband does not like to plan ahead. He loves to quote the old military saying, “to plan ahead is to plan twice”. I learned this a few hours after we were married — he had not booked anyplace for our honeymoon. “It’ll be fun,” he said. “We’ll look around and find places we want to stay.” He told me this as we headed out the Door County Peninsula in Wisconsin the evening of our wedding day. Not being a sports fan, he had no idea that there was a Green Bay Packer game and what that means to Wisconsin Cheeseheads. The hotels were filled all the way out the peninsula. There was no room at any inn. I was exhausted and practically in tears as we made yet one more stop and inquired about a room. The motel was owned by a sweetly sympathetic young couple who made a late night phone call to the woman’s grandmother. The grandma put us up in a beautiful guest room at her picket-fenced farmhouse and treated us like visiting royalty. It was a nice outcome and it’s been a wonderfully fun story for us to tell for nearly forty-eight years. These days I do most of the planning. I’m just fine with the risk of having to do it twice.
“We’ll look around…..it’ll be fun…” I can almost hear Richard saying the words. Sounds exactly like what he’d say. He hasn’t changed, thankfully.
I love planning so I love this response! 🙂
When Dad says that, Kai likes to say, “Then you just get to do the best part twice!”
True enough. But the first time is just for practice. Of course if it is also true that “practice makes perfect”, then we may be forced to admit that there could be some value to making a second bob for the apple!