The best helicopter story I have is as a parent. A couple of years back, when my little angel was in seventh grade, he wore a T-Shirt to class with George Bush’s picture and the line “Somewhere in Texas a Village is missing its idiot.” A teacher decided to send him to the principal’s office, saying the T-Shirt was disruptive. That’s when i helicoptered in (via phone). First question: what course was this? (I figured maybe the shirt was disrupting math). Answer: humanities. So I whipped the helicopter blades around to scare the VP. I started debating the First Amendment, invoked the ACLU — and then the VP said, “You’re a troublemaker.” I wanted to say, No shit!! He wouldn’t budge. So I decided to pull the nuclear option. (Attention everybody: nuclear option works wonders in the university also.) I said, “I would like to schedule a meeting with you and the principal.” Well, the word “meeting’ brought the conversation to an end. I helicoptered out. And the kid wore his T-Shirt to class for the rest of the year, although not as often as the Che Guevara one.

The internets are a small place. Especially the history blogosphere. The other day, a week ago today I’m pretty sure, I was saying to a friend that my only regret, in terms of the job market, was a position I badly wanted in my last year of graduate school. The job was at Central Connecticut State University, I explained. And I had wanted it so badly because I really, really wanted to remain in New England. And also because the people who had interviewed me had been really nice and seemed very smart. “Well, who interviewed you?” asked my friend. I couldn’t remember. But then I stopped by here. And there’s Heather Munro Prescott’s name. And I’m 99.9% sure she was the one who interviewed me: in the cattle-call room at the AHA. I didn’t get invited to campus, I’m afraid. But I still remember the interview experience very fondly. Even if I screwed up.

All of which is a long way of saying, hello. And I hope you found a great colleague that year. You certainly dodged a bullet when you didn’t hire me. Seriously, I’m a very big pain. And finally, sorry because this is both offthread and weird. But the coincidence was too good to ignore.

Ann, your story suggests that the helicopter parents have no sense whatsoever of boundaries–I wonder if this comes out of the Dr. Laura school of motherhood? (As in, what do they do once their children grow up and move on, after having given up everything to be “my kid’s/kids’ mom”?) A close family member of mine is a pediatrician, and these women are visible a mile away when their children are small–they go to the doctor to have their diagnosis ratified, not to hear what the doctor has to say. They want to be congratulated on what a close, intuitive relationship they have with their children, and when the doctor contradicts the mother’s diagnosis, watch out! (This goes to Heather’s last point, which is that these parents aren’t deferential to any professionals–it’s not just schoolteaches and professors that get the treatment.) Amber, good for you for sticking to your guns–eventually the grey hair and wrinkles will happen, but if you’re a woman, it won’t do you as much good as they do for men’s authority…

Yes,I’m referring to the same parent(excuse the pronoun). I felt better after I referred to all the ways I’d been flexible, even though the student hadn’t revealed her disability to me, and that because of FERPA I was forced to engage with her daughter as an adult, and not with the parent.

I was furious. But I think my age and appearance let people think they can bully me, and I just ain’t havin’it.