I have this recurring nightmare -- more like a daydream gone bad, really -- at the beginning of basketball season or at other times when collegiate pride is on the line. It begins something like this: One day, 14 or so years from now, I return home from someplace where I've been bragging about how my daughter turned down full academic scholarship offers from multiple colleges (because this is a fantasy, I'll even throw an Ivy in there) to attend her dear old Mom's alma mater.

"She had so many academic suitors," I'll have said, loftily, to a few friends, "because of her ability to mix Randy's far-left-brain tendencies with my far-right. I often find her in her room, working on polymer science equations while painting abstract art. She's this close to discovering a 47th Mersenne prime number and a never-before-used sentence structure! And did I mention? She's incredibly grounded and socially well-adjusted, to boot."

Oh, and she'll also be playing Olympic-caliber soccer.

Anyway, in my reverie, we walk through the door, and MJ greets Randy and me with a serious look. "Mom, Dad," she says, full of portent, "we need to talk."

Now, some parents, at this stage of the conversation, might think first of Juno when wondering about the crisis about to be dropped in their laps. But I know exactly what she's about to say. Only one thing, and one thing only, could warrant such a solemn beginning to a conversation in the fall of her senior year of high school. And then, there it is. She drops the bomb:

"I've decided to go to D-U-K-E."

Her little sister, who's been sitting on the floor reciting Shakespeare while experimenting with substances that might become the next great fuel source (she's practicing for the Intel Science Talent Search), puts her blow torch away, gathers her test tubes and scurries from the room, hiding behind a door in case objects are about to become airborne. I start to hyperventilate, and Randy affixes a lunch bag to my mouth. I raise one finger in the air and, as the bag inflates and deflates, I blurt out with a muffled voice, "First of all, it's spelled D-O-O-K."

"Second," I say, regaining my composure while Randy backs slowly out of the room, "when did this happen?"

"Well, remember when we had that field trip at school last spring? We went to that program on their campus?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, I kind of started to think about it then."

"Why? Because of the biomedical engineering program?"

"No ..."

"The Canadian Studies curriculum?"

"Um, no ... "

"What then?"

"Well ..."

"Oh, MJ. Don't tell me it's because --"

"It's the buildings, Mom! They're so pretty. So, I don't know ... Gothic!"

That's when I shiver and return to the present, to the laundry or the vegetable chopping or whatever I might have been doing before I began to imagine the irony of dressing my kids in Carolina outfits and posing them at the Old Well for our family Christmas card picture, only to have them run off into the arms of the enemy in a future decade. That would be karma telling me you can't force your child to be just like you.

Still, I can guide them, can't I?

"Mommy, there's a foot on your back," MJ says to me. I'm wearing one of my hundred or so ratty old workout T-shirts, which, as a collection, tell the story of the schools I've attended and the jobs I've held. It's like having a resume made of cotton.

"That's a Tar Heel, sweet pea," I tell her.

"Tar Heel? What's a Tar Heel?"

"Well, that's the mascot for Mommy's school. And," I say, with blind optimism, "the school you'll go to one day."

I didn't say: "If you want to earn any allowance, ever." But I was thinking it. Oh yes, I was thinking it.

Beth appears Tuesdays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Beth at her blog MotherBunker.