Can I get something on the record? I love moms. I really love moms. A caring mother provides the best chance, sometimes the only chance, a young person has of turning into a responsible, self-reliant, high-character adult. No mission is nobler.
However. Ahem. Even moms are subject to that fundamental caveat of life: “up to a point.” Working daily with and on behalf of tens of thousands of other people’s children, as I do as the president of Purdue University, one encounters mothers who, let’s just say, carry things a little far.
Like the one who insisted, without ever providing any documentation, that her child was allergic to all nonorganic food. She ordered food multiple times a week, accompanied by specially selected spices, and had it delivered to our dining courts with a demand that the staff cook it separately for him, to her specs. (They did, for a year, until the demands, or maybe the “allergies,” ceased.)
