An ironic story from my mother

I hope to have a few stories about my mother this week leading up to Mother's Day. Here's a short one (the picture here, taken in 2007, is of Mom and her two grand-children):

My mother is rather reserved and doesn't like to push her own ideas. She has a lot of good ideas but she often feels she is either ignored or dismissed by others. This usually happens in groups where she volunteered like at our church or at my school where she was active in the Parent Teacher Association. She wondered how she could get her opinions to be considered without having to "sell" them. Also, she didn't want her ideas to be artificially pushed ahead of the ideas of others. Why couldn't all ideas be considered? Why did the pushy people think their ideas were better than other ideas?

She heard about a book that was supposed to help in this area. I don't remember the title but it was something about how to get yourself taken more seriously. Or something like that. She couldn't find it in local book stores or in the library. So she asked a book store to order it for her. She got really excited when they called and said it had finally arrived. She picked up the book and brought it home and started reading it right away. It broke down it's advice in a number of "easy to follow" rules with the first rule being the most important idea for being taken more seriously by your peers. The first rule was, "When someone asks for your name, only tell them your last name. Always use just your last name when talking with other people." The rest of the book remained unread.