It’s dismaying, that moment as an adult when you realize that no one taught you something that you urgently need to know.

How do you apply for a mortgage, for example, or do the city workers drinking coffee on your lawn really have the right to dig a trench through your flower beds? No one covered that in social studies.

This week, we were pleased to see governments and private groups reaching across the gap between what people learn in school and what they need to know to navigate in the community.

One Love Ministries wants to save souls — but on during one “Men’s Night of Worship,” the church taught souls how to save.

Its financial literacy class, led by Arkell Barnes, focused on the basics of budgeting — starting with looking at how money has already been spent and making decisions about how to spend it in the future.

Sounds simple, but the huge popularity of personal-finance blogs like “Get Rich Slowly” and books like “Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover” suggest that most people are looking for exactly that kind of advice.

About 140 men attended, and One Love Pastor John Fitzpatrick Jr. said they will try to do similar events three times a year.

Even when there aren’t local classes, there are dozens of short, useful lessons at the website for Durham’s own Center for Responsible Lending (visit http://www.responsiblelending.org/tools-resources/).

- What can go on that big, empty lot down the street from your house? Does it have to be a house, or could it be an all-night gas station? Office buildings or a bar? Will the roads be widened?

Those decisions are the guts of urban planning, and the City-County Planning Department is heading out to the community to talk about how it should change or update approved uses for different lots along the Fayetteville Street corridor and around N.C. Central University.

People who live in that area, or anyone who wants to find out how the city makes decisions about land use, can go listen, learn and tell the city and county what they want to see. The City-County Planning Department’s open house will be May 25 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Hayti Heritage Center, 804 Old Fayetteville St.

Durham still has deep wounds from the decision to route Highway 147 through the then-thriving Hayti business district — and the first step to avoiding anything like that ever again is for community residents to get informed about what’s planned and how those plans are made.

- Finally, this week’s Durham Grit Award goes to Takesha Trapp, a fifth-grade teacher at Pearsontown Year-Round Elementary School.

Trapp, a fifth-year teacher who was trained at N.C. Central University, is the Durham Public Schools teacher of the year for 2010-2011. She gets our weekly accolade for teaching kids the most basic thing that anyone needs to know: How to tackle the world.

“My students have a high level of character, integrity, academic discipline, and motivation,” said Trapp in her application portfolio. “Every morning, our day begins with our pledge: ‘We pledge to never say we can’t. Ask if we don’t understand. And never talk back!’”

Those are the kinds of lessons that, if learned in childhood, will carry forward into the hundreds of weird, puzzling and school-didn’t-teach-me-this matters in adult life.

Good luck in the regional competition.