COLUMN: 898MELT: A Beacon of Light in a World of Despair

From Corin Brown's "The Ugly Stick Chronicles," Fall '94 From Corin Brown's "The Ugly Stick Chronicles," Fall '94Wednesday, January 20, 1994. 2:47 P.M. Light snow, getting heavier.From Corin Brown's "The Ugly Stick Chronicles," Fall '94Wednesday, January 20, 1994. 2:47 P.M. Light snow, getting heavier.My Comp Lit professor is wrapping up her lecture as most of the class is rudely and hastily making their way to the door, as Penn students are wont to do. So, like Mongo in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, I break through the shackles of my classroom as I pass through its door. As I start down the basement hallway of Williams Hall, located somewhere near the Earth's inner crust, I start to think about my next class and which sickeningly flattering compliments I can pay my brain dead TA for a decent grade. But also part of my in-transit, pre-class thought process is the quick and usually cursory computation of the no-class possibility, due to either professor absence, inclement weather, or, more likely, my desire just not do go. I begin this evaluation as I bound up the stairs from the subterranean levels of Williams Hall to the Earth's atmosphere at ground level while simultaneously zipping up my jacket and yanking on my gloves. And as I stand in the atrium between Williams Hall and Logan Hall, these conditions become explicitly apparent to me. Five degrees Fahrenheit, negative 25 degrees wind chill, snow (getting heavier) and glacial formations up and down Locust Walk. Do I dare risk life and limb by trucking down through the frozen West Philadelphia tundra in near blizzard conditions to DRL so that I can bury my nose in the very ample butt of my nausea-inducing, lard ass calculus TA? No fucking way! Sink or Swim or Die! I put my head down against the gale and tenderfoot my way home towards Super Block on top of the eighth geological wonder of the world -- The Locust Glacier. As I concentrate on my ginger gait from 36th street to 39th street, on Locust Glacier, I overhear morsels of rumor and conjecture from fellow glacier pedestrians about the one thing in the world that could top my baited anticipation of Sink or Swim. No classes Thursday! What could be better than a free day Thursday to replenish the body's fluids and minerals after it has oxidized all the toxins sucked down from 9 to 12 the previous evening? (Sorry Gatorade). I effectively grasp this possibility as I ride my glacier down Locust Walk past the compass on 37th street. (There will certainly be no drinking 40's with my buds at the Phi Cafe, this subarctic afternoon.) By the time I successfully rappel up and down the 38th street bridge and maneuver my way into Super Block, I acquire from my fellow foul-weather rogues a new nugget of no-class-tomorrow hope to cling to. . . In weather that would ordinarily drive a college campus into collective TV watching hibernation, the University campus is virtually electric with news of the mere possibility of classes being cancelled Thursday. 898-MELT. 898-MELT. We love you. As I sprint up the stairs to my room, itching to speed-dial 573-MELT until my cuticles bleed (oops, sorry Paulina, I meant 898-MELT) I remark to myself that I don't remember this campus being as abuzz with anxiety and anticipation since Don King (he of the beach raking hairdo) came to preach business ethics at Wharton. But that is how we are. 898-MELT is all we care about. 898-MELT is all anyone is talking about. Screw Fagin. Screw race relations. Screw water buffaloes. Screw diversity on the walk. Screw all that crap.Give us our 898-MELT! Give us our snow days! No one really cares what goes on behind the scenes at this school, as long as the 898-MELT hotline is up and running. Take the speech code, take the JIO, take our hot water (well wait a minute, why don't we hold on to that for now), just give us our 898-MELT! I dial 898-MELT nine times. Busy. Godammit! There must be more students calling 898-MELT right now than there are students calling PARIS at 11:59 P.M. on the last day of drop-add. I search for consolation by figuring the volume on the 898-MELT line will die down by the time Beverly Hills, 90210 rolls around on FOX. But if those porkers can inhale microwave popcorn by the baleful while watching E.T.-esque Donna tease the shit out of big Dave Silver, why can't they hit the redial button, at the same time, until they are blue in the face? Oh well. I redial some more. Bingo! No classes Thursday! Off to the Races! Thank you 898-MELT! Thursday, January 21, 1994. 1:21 P.M. Six inches of snow on the ground and counting. I rub the cigarette film from my eyes. By all respects I should be "Keith Richards" -- hungover -- but instead I feel warm and fuzzy inside. No school today. I feel like I felt when my elementary school was called for snow, except now I am not hustling to go frolic in the new fallen snow. I decide to remain in bed indefinitely. (Like I have a choice.) But just before I nod off, I see my phone next to my bed and consider the quality time we've spent together over the last 18 hours. As if to wake my phone up from a long night's rest after a long day's work, I decide to see if its redial still works. 898-MELT. Sure enough it works. And on the seventh redial I get through. . . ". . . classes for Friday, January 22 are cancelled. . ." Orgasm. After receiving the joyous news, I try to fathom what sort of volume 898-MELT will receive today. Then I think of poor Judith Rodin, our next President, and the Ivy League's first woman President. Surely a special person. She's coming to town, to visit the school, and not one student gives a rat's ass. Not one. We're too busy dialing 898-MELT. Corin Brown is a junior Political Science major from Newton, Massachusetts. The Ugly Stick Chronicles appears alternate Thursdays.

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