Don’t Say It, Write It!

I remember that my father used to have memo pads, from the federal government where he worked, that had Don’t Say It, Write It printed at the top; I presume these were part of some sort of federal efficiency drive at the time. For some reason the slogan has stuck with me.

Oliver is much better at communicating his thoughts and feelings in writing than he is verbally, and so I’m always encouraging him to channel his frustrations into writing when he can. This morning when he got up and went downstairs to use his computer he found that the Internet wasn’t working, something that, for him, would feel like having his oxygen supply cut off. Frustrating, in other words. So he sent me an email:

the internet is off not the computer it self.
and your not helping it because you were in the shower
and you not helping it.

I was, as you might intuit, in the shower during this calamity. The grammar and spelling aren’t all there, but it was a pretty clear statement of the problem. I’m proud of him.

Turned out that the iMac just needed to be rebooted for everything to start working again, and so the email he sent eventually arrived at the office a few hours later. Where I read it just now.

Comments

Heather M's picture
Heather M on May 29, 2011 - 16:08 Permalink

love the slogan! and the photo above. Great job Oliver!

abnelson's picture
abnelson on October 29, 2013 - 22:12 Permalink

I just found a Memo tablet with that saying at the top. (Not quite the same as the one in your picture.) It was in my Dad’s stuff who died about 20 yrs ago. He worked at Hanford Nuclear Plant in Washington State. I wonder if this was part of the “secrecy” that surrounded the plant. Dad couldn’t ever talk about his job.