Mama Done Told Me. . . : . . . and she probably told you, too. Until you didn’t want to hear one more piece of advice. Ever. But now we admit: Mother Knows Best.

If she told you once, she told you a thousand times: “Elbows off the table. Stand up straight. Go before you leave the house. Two wrongs don’t make a right. If Johnny jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too?”

But did you listen?

Nope. In one ear and out the other.

Mom was undaunted, however. She knew her job: To verbally pummel you until wisdom was indelibly etched in your brain; to repeat and repeat until you mouthed her maxims before they even left her tongue.

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“Oh, so the egg is teaching the chicken?” she’d ask. “Well, this hurts me more than it hurts you. But when you have your own children, you’ll understand.”

And, apparently, you did. Because when the Los Angeles Times asked readers to submit the best advice their mothers ever gave them (in 50 words or less), hundreds of men, women and some children sent classic lines that have survived through generations, often with wrenching testimony about the life-enhancing efficacy of the advice.

Couldn’t these moms and dads come up with something new for the ‘90s?

No need, they claim. Despite decades of progress and vast changes in the social fabric of our lives, the advice most cherished--because it has helped them most--is that that has the ancient ring of truth.

Most said their mama’s homilies have been so useful they want to pass them on to their own children. There was so much old-fangled wisdom that experts were sought out to explain why the world changes so fast, but Mom’s advice seems to stay the same.

So Happy Mother’s Day--and remember as you read: “If you want to soar with eagles, don’t hang out with turkeys. Think before you speak. Don’t say yes until you’ve heard the question. And ask for what you want or you’ll never get it.”

Or, as Gary Bennett of Norwalk wrote:

Give without asking for things in return,

Think before speaking, it’s hearers that learn;

Love without ceasing, do not hold a grudge;

Be friends to a stranger and don’t quickly judge.

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Learn to type, so you’ll have something to fall back on.

Sounds obsolete, but dozens of readers say it’s the best advice they ever got. They say it helped them to succeed, and will help their children even more. And the experts agree.

Jerry Houser, director of USC’s career development center, says typewriters may be outdated, but the typewriter keyboard isn’t.

“In fact, from now on kids will have to learn that keyboard from Day One of their education,” Houser says, because everyone will have to know how to use computers. (As a sign of the times, mothers nowadays give their computer kids typing software instead of old-fashioned typing manuals.)

Houser’s own child, now in first grade, is clickety-clacketing on the keyboard already.

“All the staff here (at USC), whether they’re managers, counselors--I can’t think of any job that doesn’t use computers--and computer knowledge begins with learning to type,” Houser says.

So Mother was right.

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Put money aside for a rainy day.

This was the financial advice most treasured by readers. Many say they’d be nowhere if they hadn’t heeded . Others say they are nowhere because they didn’t sock it away when they could.

Still others--an amazing number--confessed they’d been counseled by their mothers to hide their savings from their spouse--not out of greed, but out of love: “If the family gets in trouble, you’ll have money that even your husband (wife) didn’t know was there,” a reader wrote.

Beth Kobliner, consumer banking columnist for Money magazine, says a recently completed reader poll shows “the biggest source of conflict among couples is money.” And she says the age-old advice to “save for a rainy day” is still the best advice a mother could give.

Couples who save feel more secure--and therefore have fewer day-to-day money spats, she says.

“Mom’s old advice to squirrel away a nest egg is even more valuable now than it was in days gone by,” says Karen Altfest, director of the financial planning program at the New School for Social Research in New York.

“The sooner you see the money start to compound and grow, the better off you’ll be. I’m queasy about keeping it a secret from your partner, because both of you should agree on the goal. But it’s better to have one putting something away than to have neither saving at all.”

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Never go to sleep mad.

In Grandma’s day, couples didn’t live together before marriage, sex wasn’t discussed in graphic detail, two-parent families were the norm--and, you might think, people related to each other in a totally different way.

You’d be wrong, according to our mail. Of course, some admonitions might sound antique today (“Don’t let a boy touch you where your clothes ought to be”). But the basics of dealing with love, life and the human condition apparently stay the same.

Don’t marry a man to change him. Value what’s under a woman’s hat more than what’s in her bra. The color of a person’s skin tells you no more about him than the color of his eyes. When you talk, you hear what you already know; when you listen, ou learn something new.

Dr. David Viscott, director of the Viscott Center for Natural Therapy in Los Angeles, says our readers’ letters illustrate something extraordinary: “Nothing truly basic changes in human relations through the ages. It is the customs and expectations that change, but never the emotions. Advertising and the media have bombarded us with huge distortions of what we need to be complete.”

What we really need is much simpler, he says. And it can often be gleaned from the comforting adages, “passed from one generation to another, that form the thread which defines us and holds us together.”

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Mind your manners.

No, politeness is not extinct. In fact, a favorite piece of Mom’s advice, from readers young and old, is: “Always write a thank-you note.”

An Encino woman is one of many who wrote to express amazement at “how touched and grateful people are when you take time to acknowledge them in writing.”

Judith Martin, who writes the syndicated Miss Manners column, says only ingrates and louts would consider the written thank-you note an obsolete form.

“As long as there are presents given, parties attended or kindnesses extended in this world, the thank-you note will live. People can’t simply declare things unnecessary because they don’t want to bother doing them. And I object strongly to the concept that you can do away with gratitude (i.e. the note) but keep the generosity (i.e. the gift).”

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Brush your hair.

Some readers wrote to say their mothers believed that appearances matter above all else.

“If the surface looks good, no one cares what’s underneath,” writes one man, whose grooming is doubtlessly impeccable.

“Mother taught that even if you have only one suit, you must always keep it clean and pressed,” wrote another.

“Stand up straight and get a manicure,” was the advice that carried a West Covina woman through many crises in her life.

And “Be true to your teeth, or one day they’ll be false to you” stands out as the best advice Mom ever gave to a Pomona man.

Letitia Baldrige, author of 13 books on the subject, says: “Grooming is much more important today than it used to be. We’re in an era of grunge, of general casualness and slobbishness. And the person who is meticulously groomed--even if he or she is wearing jeans and a tie-dye shirt--stands out above the crowd. You feel the cleanness of the clothing, of the person’s body. People with shiny hair, clean fingernails and clean clothes are probably going to do better than the rest.”

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If any or all the above sound like what your own mother said, be grateful.

She probably taught you not to speak with your mouth full, not to say anything if you can’t say something nice, that a job worth doing is worth doing well. And remember how she always said, “One day you’ll thank me”? Well, today could be the day.