Saying, “But mooom, you know I don’t like sketti!
”, Stanford’s Provost John Etchemendy insisted on Sunday that he would not finish the plate of spaghetti his mother had so graciously made him.
The conflict reportedly arose from Etchemendy’s disappointment upon finding that his mother had forgotten about Pizza Night, a long-standing family tradition of ordering in Domino’s on Sunday evenings. The Provost’s mother offered to make “something else Italian that the kids will eat”, but John openly refused the offer.
“You promised!” he is said to have cried, slamming his head into the wall in the family room. “You promised you promised you promised you promised you promised!”
Etchemendy went on to sulk in his room for the rest of the night, not coming out even to watch that Phineas and Ferb special he had been talking about since Tuesday.
Such behavior has become increasingly common for the Provost, who turned heads last week when it took his mother a full hour to persuade him to get in the bath after a mud-soaked touch football game with Garth Saloner, the Dean of the GSB.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into him,” Etchemendy’s mom, Joanne, remarked.
“Ever since that Hennessy kid down the street started refusing to take off his batman cape at faculty meetings, John has thought he can do whatever he wants.
But I don’t know how I can respond; I’ve already taken away his Pokémon cards, and he stopped eating dessert because he says my cookies are ‘icky’. They really don’t give you a manual for this ‘parenting a university administrator’ thing.”
