The administrators of Wake County Public Schools have given me the best gift a fellow could ever hope for: a gilt-edged excuse for begging off any future speaking requests.

I’ve been recruited to speak at Wake school events on numerous occasions over the years. (Don’t be impressed. Anybody with a regular byline in the local paper is fair game for a teacher who feels the need to coast for an hour or so.) My most vivid memory is the, uh, “inspirational” talk I gave to a group of eighth-graders during Career Day. Afterwards, I was escorted to the gym to sit at a table behind a crudely hand-lettered sign that identified me as “Writer,” where I was supposed to extol the glories of a career in letters. I would have, except that a twenty-something vixen at the next table was extolling the glories of being a grocery-store cakemaker — and she offered free samples. The only visitors I had were two boys who were only killing time until they could get close enough to grab a piece of cake and ogle the baker.

But I always found it hard to refuse requests to speak to school groups. It seemed like a civic duty, and besides, the person making the request was usually one of my kids’ teachers, which meant that I refused at their peril.

Well, those days are over. All I have to do now is decline to sign the school district’s new guest-speaker form, and — bingo! — I’m off the hook. No signee, no speakee.

School administrators recently decided that all speakers have to submit to formal guidelines, most of which are innocuous — agreeing to dress appropriately, for instance. But then there’s this:

Materials and presentations must not denigrate any culture, race, gender, national origin, or religion. Also, while factual information on politics, religion, culture, or ethnicity may be presented, proselytizing is not permitted.

I’ve done some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and concluded that under that guideline a speaker can say — nothing. After all, ours is a tender society. We are quivering masses of un-armored protoplasm, wounded by the mildest verbal jostling. Even the seemingly bland greeting of “Good morning!” is offensive to any high school’s Society of Gloomy Goth Depressives, whose culture is firmly rooted in the idea that mornings (and all other things related to life) are bad. Very very bad.

That’s an exaggeration, of course, but not much of one. The guideline above is both absurdly sweeping and intentionally vague. If I mention that some societies practice genital mutilation of young women, but that we in America have another term for it (”criminal assault and disfigurement”), have I denigrated the culture of the mutilators? If I assert that one of the benefits of British colonialism was that the admirable notions of justice and common law took root in many lands, am I proselytizing on behalf of imperialism?

The problem is that everyone’s denigration meter is calibrated differently, and these days the most sensitive meter becomes the standard.

Some public officials have balked at the guidelines, declaring that they’ll skip school events rather than be held to them. That stance brought this response:

“Why would someone not want to sign that form?” said Michael Evans, a Wake schools spokesman. “That’s in place to protect everybody from the speakers to the teachers to the students.”

Not exactly, sir. I wouldn’t sign the form because anyone can see that it’s in place only to protect bureaucrats, not speakers. In fact, it would be used to hang me out to dry if a complaint came in.