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I had a simple method of not forgetting. It was my wife's responsibility. I had to always call her whenever I got where I was going or was weathered in somewhere. She closed the flight plan.

I'm a readback champion, so I like IFR plans out of places with grumpy, pissy controllers. They will never of course give you the route you filed for, but instead some horribly tedious readback which has you departing in as close to 180 degrees from your eventual enroute airway as possible. They read it to you in the cockpit like that speed reading guy who used to do commercials for FEDEX. They figure that might be enough to rattle you into departing VFR and filing from the air I guess. Nothing lets the wind out of their sails than a perfect readback in a single pilot plane. A readback that has more goofy headings, intersections, altitudes, and such.

The funny part is then once you leave tower, and check in with departure, they route you direct anyway? Why they play such games with people I have no idea?

The primary reason why is because the National Airspace System was created specifically for Part 121 and 135 operations. GA screws up ATCs precious sequencing. Envision the following: "UA235 Heavy, you're following a C-150 on final, slow to 90 knots," and the subsequent muttering from the flight deck.

Fortunately, I never had to deal with such folks in ATC. I was also pretty good with readbacks and the radio in general. But I will concur that it seems like you get routed in very strange directions sometimes. I used to just tell myself it was some sort of weird traffic phenomenon that was occurring at the time to keep myself smiling through it.