Saved by Wheaton

In the mail today came an extra-large tee-shirt from Wheaton College—more proof that the people out there on the plains west of Chicago are among the nicest people in the world. I visited the campus this week, but in the midst of the lecture I had to give and the television panel and the faculty dinner, I ran out of time to fulfill one of my great duties.

You know how you only have to do something for a child once or twice, and it somehow turns into a tradition —a cherished family ritual that one violates only at the apparent risk of destroying all good memories of childhood? Well, a couple years ago, I was given as a joke (at Princeton, I think) an extra-extra-large tee-shirt, one of those pieces of clothing only a linebacker could wear with comfort. And, passing the joke along, I gave it to my now-ten-year-old daughter Faith, who promptly used it as a nightgown—establishing the tradition that every time I visit a campus, I get her a an enormous tee-shirt from the school to add to her nightgown collection.

At Wheaton, I fell short, but the school has rescued me with an overnight express of an orange and black shirt. Whew. The trouble is, Faith’s starting to ask for tee-shirts from schools I haven’t visited recently—schools she reads about, or sees when we watch a basketball game, or learns about when a faculty member stops by for dinner at our apartment. But here, I think, I draw the line. It’s hard enough keeping up with one extra-extra-large tee-shirt tradition.