r Par 2 By Mitch Albom Published: 03/16/2014 Iremember when my free ride ended. I had been complaining about doing my chores and the size of my allowance, and my father took me by the shoulders, pointed a finger and said, “No more allowance. It’s time you pulled your own weight around here.” Twas 11. Shortly thereafter, I began my working life, selling programs at a baseball stadium. I'd work five hours and sometimes make $4, lugging a canvas sack of programs up and down the stadium steps, sweating in a smelly uniform that had been worn by other workers. I might not have loved it. But I never thought about calling a lawyer. All I knew was that my father said it was time to grow up, and that's the way it was. ‘That's obviously a different approach than the one taken by Rachel Canning, an 18-year-old who left her New Jersey home nearly five months ago after her parents disapproved of her boyfriend. She then sued them for her tuition and living expenses. Yeah. Like I might have tried that. Most people from my generation — or any before it — read this story and rolled their eyes at the details: Rachel cutting high school, getting suspended, her boyfriend doing the same, her moving in with her best friend’s so-called “concerned” family, then seeking high school and college tuition costs, and $654 a week in living expenses. Six hundred fifty-four a week?I know iPhones are expensive, but really? Legally breaking from your family In her lawsuit, Rachel claimed that she was “non-emancipated.” That's a new one. I was just getting used to kids being “emancipated,” which is another way of saying your dad is Will Smith. Used occasionally in cases of terrible abuse, “emancipation” is mostly accessed by young celebrities and movie stars, Macaulay Culkin wanted out of his family. So did Corey Feldman and Drew Barrymore. It enabled them to keep the money they were earning. Rachel Canning did the opposite. She left and wanted her parents to pay for everything, while taking responsibility for nothing. Something’s wrong with that equation. Now, we can’t judge this case too strictly from afar. There are many details we can never know. But based on the legal process, certain things were determined: This young woman was not being enslaved, starved or physically abused. She went to private school. Was an honor student. She claimed she was emotionally abused (she complained her mother called her “fat,” among other things), but an investigation by the state’s Division of Child Protection and Permanency ruled the claims were “unfounded.” So, from a distance, it sounds like a fairly typical “I’m in love and you can't tell me what to do” dispute between a teen and her parents. The question is, how did it get so far? Pressure or parenting? ‘The answer is media that now act as if reality TV is the barometer of what makes news. The answer is a legal system gone haywire, in which anyone can sue anyone for anything.