“It’s that time of year again, and I can’t stand it,” stated freshman Max Dudley. “Being from southern California, you just don’t have these kinds of problems there.”
Max was referring to a pandemic — already well-known to students from cold-weather states — that has once again plagued campus. He explained that “The worst thing about freezing temperatures isn’t the excessively big coat I have to wear, the runny nose I get walking to each class, or the hat hair from my knit cap. Plain and simple, it’s that you can see everyone’s breath.”
According to a recent poll, 100 percent of UW-Madison students’ breaths are visible when the temperature dips below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. An upset Max furiously begged the question, “How am I supposed to tell who the coolest kids on campus are with this breath seeing nonsense going on?”
He went on to say that, “Back where I’m from, everyone knows that the coolest people are the smokers. But now, everybody and their mother looks like they’re smoking when I walk around Library Mall. It’s ridiculous.”
Sociology Professor Robert Thompson explained that “Since its inception in America, which coincided with initial European immigration, smoking has been a status of not caring, loftiness, and quite frankly, the best-looking people. All these traits culminate in a strong correlation — quite possibly causation — between smoking and being cool.”
Max said that this dilemma has caused his social life to suffer, “Yeah, I’ve already made some friends on Witte 9B, but I wanted to continue to grow my network. Not being able to see who is actually smoking has really hampered my ability to do just that, though. I have to literally walk within five feet of someone to see if they have a cigarette hanging out of the corner of their mouth or if it’s just a plain Jane not permanently damaging her lungs — those people are the worst. It’s getting to the point where I’m considering transferring.”
Although University Health Services recognizes the incredibly negative health effects of smoking, they released the following statement this past Friday: “Smoking is a great guarantee to a slow death, but at what cost? Lighting up can make you new friends or even get you laid. You can’t die if you’ve never truly lived.”
