I just saw a post that my Vanderbilt U. cancelled classes because of the snow. Bunch of pansies. When I went there they ne-e-ver closed for snow. Never. They didn’t even close when, in my freshman year, everything was covered in so much ice, we could have ice skated to class. We never got any Mondays off for anything either. Ne-e-ver. I remember the rumor was that the only time Vandy had ever cancelled class was in the 1870’s when a bull broke through a fence and was chasing students around campus, (which I’m sure was awful, but sounds hilarious, especially because I’m imagining really old-timey students wearing black robes, running around like headless chickens, going “Eek! Eek! as their robes flap in the wind).

They didn’t even cancel class when a tornado hit downtown Nashville and ricocheted off the corner of campus. I remember I was in “Great Works of the Wester Tradition” at the time, in which we had been reading some very atheism-heavy books. A girl was giving her presentation on Thus Spoke Zarathustra while outside it went black, then green. “Man is Superman,” she said.

“Boom! Boom! Boom!” from outside.

“Man is the measure,” she said.

“Boom! Boom! Boom!” the tornado said.

The lights flickered and went out. My professor raised his hands to the heavens and exclaimed, “God forgive me for making them read these heathen novels!”

State of emergency nothin’. Go to class!

-M.

(That tornado story is one of my all-time favorites to tell—and every word of it true. No joke, yo.)