A feel-good story about high-schoolers doing a good deed revealed a stark parenting divide.

I recently wrote a short piece about students at the St. Louis-area Ladue High School raising more than $80,000 for children’s hospitals as part of a months-long fundraising effort. I quoted the co-organizers, who talked about the long hours and passion they put into the project, along with a charity official, who praised the students’ teamwork and commitment to the cause.

For context, I included a sentence noting that it helps fundraising efforts that the district is “well-resourced,” located in one of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the state. When the accomplishment being noted is a large sum of money raised, it makes sense that being situated in a relatively affluent area helps -- to some degree.

A parent, who wished to remain anonymous, responded angrily, upset that this detail was even mentioned. A parent of one of the teenagers quoted, however, responded with great appreciation for the coverage.

While we all want to believe our success is solely a product of our hard work and talent, most of us know that’s rarely the case. Many of us benefit from things we haven’t earned, like the circumstances into which we were born. Some parents are comfortable with their children seeing their accomplishments in that perspective. And anyone wanting to raise resilient children can teach them not to rely on, or expect, unqualified praise.

What was surprising was the reaction of the district.

Bailey Otto, a communications assistant with the Ladue School District, sent a critical email after the piece ran online.

Otto wrote that “the portion of the article where you reference the school district’s ‘well-resourced community’ using one of our ZIP codes is inaccurate. The district serves 10 different municipalities throughout six ZIP codes,” she said, and attached a chart of these ZIP codes and their median incomes. She added that “painting the district in such a broad stroke is inaccurate at best, and it denigrates the hard work of our students by suggesting that they did not have to work as hard to fundraise for the event.”

The attached chart did not offer a breakdown of the ZIP codes of the students who participated in the fundraiser, but rather of the entire district. The district couldn’t say what percentage of the fundraiser’s participants came from its wealthiest corners. Yet its own chart highlights how much wealthier the district’s students are compared to the rest of the state. Every ZIP code was higher than the Missouri median income of $48,173, with half of the ZIP codes showing median incomes of more than $100,000.

It was an odd data set to use to say, essentially, “don’t call us ‘well-resourced.’”

The most unfortunate part of the complaint is that it paints the students as victims in a story about their achievement. What a missed opportunity to talk about local economic realities and disparities.

Missouri’s most recent data indicate that 11 percent of students in Ladue High School are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, the most commonly used marker for the level of poverty in a district. That percentage is among the lowest of public high schools in the state.

It’s not a stretch to say that raising the same amount of money in an impoverished district would be harder than in one of the state’s wealthiest. Should this logical fact take away from anyone’s sense of worth or accomplishment?

It shouldn’t.

When an objectively affluent district complains about a mention of its socioeconomic advantage -- even when talking about the ability of students to raise money -- it’s not doing the kids any favors.

Jill Farmer, whose daughter participated in the fundraiser, said she didn’t find the sentences in question unfair. While the district has more economic diversity than most people assume, “it’s fair to say kids with resources can sometimes tap those resources more easily,” she said. “To point that out doesn’t automatically deduct the hard work -- the blood, sweat and tears -- that went into raising that money.”

She shared a historically American value that those who have much ought to do much. So, when did wealthy Americans get so fragile?

It may have something to do with the fact that the haves and have-nots in America live increasingly segregated lives. Those comfortably in the middle class, or higher, may have an intellectual idea of what it means to be poor in America, but they have no clue of what the daily reality looks like for many families. How many of us from middle- or upper-class backgrounds have spent even one entire day in an “under-resourced” school -- one in which the majority of students cannot afford to pay $2 for school lunch, let alone commit to raising hundreds for a charity fundraiser?

Students from an impoverished district could spend just as many hours, with the same level of commitment, and would face a much harder challenge raising that sum of money.

The original story, which noted that this school raised the most money in the state, also noted that a high school in Carmel, Indiana raised the most money in the country -- bringing in more than $400,000. One of the organizers pointed out to me that the Indiana high school is far bigger than hers.

It can be easier to see the advantages that others bring to the table than it is to admit our own.

In the fairy tale, it took a small child to cry out that the emperor had no clothes.

In our real-life horror story, it’s teenagers who are spitting truth to power. We adults watching them are holding our breath. Is this what it’s finally going to take? After we tuned out the pain of parents whose babies were slaughtered in classrooms, will we listen as the kids who survived the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting march and beg for their lives?

You better believe America is listening.

It’s the honesty, moral clarity and raw emotion of these students’ message that is a gut punch: Their friends were murdered. They nearly died. They want action.

“The people in the government who are voted into power are lying to us,” survivor Emma Gonzalez said in a speech that shook the nation. “And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and are prepared to call BS.”

Any parent who has argued with a teenager can tell those politicians what they’re up against.

Teenagers own righteous indignation. They don’t believe you when you tell them something can’t be done. They have a fierce loyalty to their friends. And most of all, teenagers have amazing BS detectors. They can spot a phony so easily because they spend most of their days in high schools surrounded by preening and posing.

These kids couldn’t bear to hear the phonies start their “thoughts and prayers” chorus after the nightmare they escaped.

Parkland Strong decided Never Again.

We should get familiar with some of their names: Emma “We call BS” Gonzalez, David Hogg, Sarah Chadwick, Cameron Kasky, Delaney Tarr, Jaclyn Corin, Alfonso Calderon. Some of them are too young to vote, but they are changing the debate. They’ve focused their grief into fighting for gun reforms that the vast majority of Americans support, like universal background checks.

And they’ve given the cause a voice that should ring awfully close to home for any parent.

Unbelievably, a right-wing smear campaign has started against these young survivors. Their principal had to issue a statement confirming they are his students and not paid crisis actors, like nutjob conspiracy theorists have alleged.

Hey, kids: They’re freaking out because they’re scared you might actually change things.

These survivors traveled to Tallahassee and watched while Republican lawmakers refused to even consider a bill that would ban assault weapons, like the one used to murder their friends. They’re planning a nationwide demonstration, a March for Our Lives, on March 24.

I hope they focus on a date even more critical than that march: Tuesday, Nov. 6, around 250 days from now. I hope they ask groups like the League of Women Voters about countering voter-suppression tactics, and that they create massive voter registration drives and make plans on how to get voters to the polls.

This is Generation Z, which makes up a quarter of the U.S. population. They are a larger cohort than the baby boomers or millennials. They will be a tsunami at the polls when they hit 18, but they are realizing their power even before that.

It’s because they know firsthand how outrageous it is that an expelled teenager could legally purchase a semiautomatic weapon that killed 17 of their classmates and faculty. They know how much the NRA donates to their legislators. They’ll find out that President Trump’s budget proposal cuts $12 million from existing background check systems. They may already know that Trump signed the repeal of an Obama regulation after Sandy Hook that would have kept some mentally ill citizens from buying guns.

They are fighting in the immediate aftermath of trauma. They are fighting alongside the memory of their friends. They can spot a phony a mile away.

You know who’s listening and watching them even more closely than those hoping they fail? Mothers ready to defend them, like Rebecca Kerley, a kindergarten teacher in suburban St. Louis whose daughter is a junior in high school. Kerley received a terrifying text from her last week when rumors of a threat floated around the high school, causing panic. School officials determined it was not a credible threat, but that didn’t ease the fears of many students and parents so soon in the aftermath of a mass school shooting.

“They’re not doing enough to keep us safe,” Kerley’s daughter said. “Something else needs to be done. I shouldn’t be scared to go to school every day.”

Kerley, who’s had to practice intruder drills with her 5-year-old students, knows this is true. She has her eyes on the students around the country stepping up and saying “enough.” She knows this constant fear of mayhem and death in schools is not OK. None of this is OK.

These high-schoolers’ bravery will make us braver. They are inspiring us to speak louder and demand action. We can’t protect them in their classrooms, but we can defend them from the trolls and internet bullies trying to tear them down.

Right now, these teenagers have our attention. Right now, they are getting headlines.

We won’t let their voices fade.

Get ready, NRA-bought politicians: They can see you.

And they’re calling you out.

When Phillip Stallone asked his future father-in-law for his daughter’s hand in marriage, he faced an important question.

“Do you have any debt?” he was asked.

Stallone, 29 at the time, confessed to carrying a gasoline credit card and a house account at Bissinger’s, a gourmet chocolatier. It was an unusual answer, but Stallone’s appreciation for fine chocolates started young.

As a young boy, his father used to take him along when he visited a car dealership in St. Louis’ Central West End. Bissinger’s was across the street, and his dad would drop him off there while he chatted with the dealer about old cars. It was the only Rolls Royce dealer in the state, Stallone remembers.

Stallone would tell the sales clerks in the shop that he was just hanging out, waiting for his dad, and they would offer him a free sample from their bowl.

“What do you think?” they would ask.

It was the best chocolate he’d ever tasted. It was a smart strategy: Exposing a young child to the finer things in life is a good way to create an expensive lifelong habit. Stallone never forgot the taste of those treats.

Years later, when he was a teenager and had his first job, he went back to buy a sample pack as a gift for his mother. The box cost more than he was making at the time. The store clerk said he could come back and pay for it on Saturday -- payday.

The glory of a house account was realized that day.

There was something great about being able to walk into a chocolate shop, indulge in gourmet dark chocolate and say, “Just put it on my account,” he said. (Recently, a store clerk asked him if it was possible to just pay with a credit card.)

He worked at Stallone’s Formal Wear, which had been established by his grandfather in 1899. There was a dry cleaner next door, and a young woman stopped by to visit her friends who worked there. They struck up a friendship over the years, and he took her to his favorite chocolate shop during their courtship.

“When you are eating a box of chocolate with someone you dearly love, it makes a difference,” he said.

There’s a scientific explanation why this melt-in-your-mouth treat feels so good. Eating chocolate releases a host of delightful neurotransmitters. First, there’s the caffeine that causes a quickening of the heart rate. There is also another stimulant, theobromine, in chocolate. Then, add a bit of serotonin, a natural mood-lifter, which the body makes from the amino acid tryptophan. Chocolate contains both serotonin and tryptophan. You can also find anandamide in the fat in chocolate, which activates a receptor that causes dopamine production.

With this rush of feel-good chemicals flooding our system, it only makes sense that romantic love would be intensified. And Stallone loved giving good chocolate as much as eating it. Once he gave his 6-year-old niece an 11-pound chocolate bunny for Easter.

“Her mother and father were about ready to skin me alive,” he laughed. “But talk about a head-turner.”

In the late ‘80s, he bought his wife a three-pound box of chocolate for Valentine’s Day. He brings the original heart box into Bissinger’s every year, where they refill it and write the date on the back. One year he nearly forgot, until a store clerk left a message saying she needed his heart. His secretary was a little concerned by the note.

“She thought I had a medical problem,” he said. But he raced down to the shop the morning of Feb. 13 and watched while they filled his heart box on the spot.

He had a hunch his wife would share his love of sweets, based on her father’s reaction to his debt “confession” many years ago. His future father-in-law hugged him and gave them his blessing.

Stallone married Candace Dower 42 years ago this July.

He calls her Candy.