This week, I did something so cruel, so monstrous, to my children that, to judge their reaction, they will someday be talking about it to their therapists as an obstacle from their youth that they, well into adulthood, valiantly struggle to overcome.

I refused to let them wear sweatpants to school.

This last week, it finally got below 60 degrees in Athens, Georgia—remember fall? It was a full three months of the year in which you could wear a light jacket and have an occasional dalliance with a go...