My Aunt Fannie, of Monroe City, Mo., used to say, "Old folks repeat themselves. When you are talking to three generations of kids, you forget what you already said to which bunch. So you say it again." I have tried to keep that in mind because I tell stories for a living. Repetition is the way we learn things.

An old man I hunted deer with was repetitive about the sharpening of knives. "You always want to whet against the stone," he would say, "never with it. You don't want to drag yer blade over yer leavins." I didn't understand that then and don't now. But I keep my knives sharp by pulling the edge against the stone.

It's pretty much the same with stories we tell our children. We repeat things, hoping some of it will stay with them. Such as King Midas who wanted the golden touch and ended up turning his daughter into a statue. The fisherman who got three wishes and each one got him into more trouble. The magical "third time's a charm" stories we all grew up with. There is a reason for repetition; you have to tell something several times before you believe it yourself.

Like this long-ago instance: A man we all called Uncle Tom used to take us coon hunting when I was a boy. He knew every foot of his land, and all the shortcuts were firmly locked into his memory. He was such an avid hounds man and loved the chase so much that he had made several convenient gaps in his miles of fence, taking down two strands of barbed wire between trees so that a person could step over them. He was always reminding us to look out for the knee-level wire that was hard to see in the dark.

"Now boys," he'd tell us, "you have to look where you're going when you get to one of my gaps. It's big enough fer a man to squeeze through, but mind the bottom wire."

Having told us this every time we hunted with him, all of us boys knew what he'd say every time we came to a shortcut. "Now boys, mind the wire," was a joke with us.

One night we stopped in the woods to listen to the hounds when a commotion broke out just over a hill. Our four hounds sounded like a dozen not a hundred yards away.

"Boys, them dogs is looking up!" shouted Uncle Tom. Grabbing lanterns and axes, we all took off at a dead run for the scene of battle.

Uncle Tom hit one of his shortcut gaps at full speed, forgetting the wire. We got to see him do a cartwheel with his 22 rifle, his lantern and his axe all going different directions. The best part was we got to learn the value of repetition.

"Mind the wire!" shouted Uncle Tom, upside down in midspin. And of course, the rest of us did.