I admit it: I’m a mama’s baby. You can laugh if you want, but the truth is, I bet you are, too. Even if your mama’s gone on — as mine has — or if you’re are on the wrong side of 50ish, you and I still lay hold to the claim. Always will.

Oh, it gets us in trouble sometimes. You know:

“Sorry, hon, I’ll be home late tonight. Mama needs me to fix her faucet” – that, even though your kitchen faucet’s been leaking for a year.

Or, “That casserole was pretty good tonight, honey,” then mumbling under your breath, “almost as good as mama’s.”

Perhaps, in the end, maybe even our wives know that it’s probably okay to be a mama’s baby, sometimes.

But let’s lay this little issue to rest once and for all. I knew we needed the best source available to solve it, so I went out and hired Mr. Paul Harvey, the greatest news commentator of all time. Even back in the 70s, Brian Light and Doocy and the crew would listen to him every day at lunch as we laid brick all over LaGrange. Paul Harvey is an icon, and his voice of reason is missed every day at noon.

So, today we call on him to us help solve this minor issue by referring to his “The Rest of the Story” writings. Surely when Paul Harvey says it, our wives will understand finally that it’s a very natural thing that her spaghetti falls a tad short of mama’s. Paul Harvey indicates that it is the natural order of things, and Mr. Harvey knows more than we do because he knows the “rest” of the story.

James, he said, was a mama’s baby. Even on his deathbed, he asked for a piece of paper, and he leaned up and wrote his mama a letter.

Ted began letters to his mama with “Darling Beloved Little Motherling!” He was a mama’s baby through and through.

Bill’s mama believed “Willie” needed constant watching and correcting. She said she didn’t believe you could love your children too much. Willie, they say, was a mama’s baby his whole life.

Talk about a mama’s boy! Frank wouldn’t even go to school without his mama, and the school was Harvard University!

Ol’ Harry clung to his mama’s apron strings all of her 94 years. Harry became pretty successful in his life, but at the end of his mama’s days he conducted his urgent business right by her side.

David imitated his mama subconsciously all his life: her laugh, her expressions, her simplest smiles. David became a big army man and once ordered a subordinate to order a Mother’s Day card for him to send to his mama.

What about L.B.’s most cherished school paper? It was entitled, “I’d Rather Be Mama’s Boy!” And he was.

All of these fellas were mama’s boys, and if they were, we can be, too. You know them — James Garfield, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight David Eisenhower and L.B. Johnson.

All mama’s boys! Just like you and me.

And that, dear wives, is not just the “rest of the story.”

That the end of the story.