It can be triggered by something as innocent as a John Deere baseball cap.
“I’m not sure where we went wrong,” says Ellen McCormack, nervously fondling the recycled paper cup holding her organic Kona soy latte. “It seems like only yesterday Rain was a carefree little boy at the Montessori school, playing non-competitive musical chairs with the other children and his care facilitators.”
“But now…” she pauses, staring out the window of her postmodern Palo Alto home. The words are hesitant, measured, bearing a tale of family heartbreak almost too painful for her to recount. “But now, Rain insists that I call him Bobby Ray.”
Even as her voice is choked with emotion, she summons an inner courage — a mother’s courage — and leads me down the hall to “Bobby Ray’s” bedroom, for a firsthand glimpse at the psychic devastation that claimed her son.
It’s not an isolated case.
Some say the craze threatens even the nation’s most exclusive prep schools. At Exeter, Andover and St. Albans, rumors abound of secret societies where initiates are steeped in the black arts of restrictor plate cheating and satellite descramblers. Washington’s elite Sidwell Friends School was nearly forced to close after scandalized parents learned that several students were openly touting Sams Club cards.