Up until a minute and a half ago, the thought of spending an afternoon in the ZSR Library was likely to fill me with a sense of dread faster than a practiced hunter fills a leaping stag with buckshot. If you had called me yesterday to join you in the Stacks for a study session or a pot of tea, I would undoubtedly have grown nauseous at the thought of claustrophobic study carrels, rows upon rows of nondescript volumes, and worst of all, the creaking of the book cart, driven incessantly by some undergraduate wastrel with just enough sense to wear headphones. I would have turned down your invitation if I hadn’t already hung up the phone. But that was the old me. Ask again tomorrow. I’ll come. Probably. Maybe not.

Why?

Because ninety seconds ago, I experience a Wikiphany. Some immortal hand or eye must have guided my own hands to the keyboard, my fingers to the “W-I-K-I-P-E-D-I-A and Z-S-M-I-T-H-R-E-Y-N-O-L-D-S” keys, and my eyes to the screen. It was as though the ghost of old Z. Smith himself had read my sullen thoughts and lead me to his Wikitaph, so that I might be shown the light of his short, illustrious life:

Zachary Smith Reynolds never lived to see a twenty-first candle added to his birthday cake. The youngest son of tobacco tycoon R.J. Reynolds, Z. Smith aborted his education as a teenager because he preferred aviation to multiplication. Plus, with a $17 million inheritance, he didn’t have much use for a college degree. He was married at eighteen, divorced at twenty, and remarried six days later. Apparently, he threatened to kill himself if his second wife refused his proposal. She didn’t. Together, they threw a lot of parties, but the fun ended in 1932 when young Zach was mysteriously shot in the right temple by a pistol. His story was the inspiration for two movies, one entitled Reckless.

Never again will I take for granted the history behind the Z. Smith Reynolds Library. Never again will mention of its name make my countenance fall, or fill me with a sullen dread. The next time I walk through those too-pressurized doors, past the student watchman at the desk and into the atrium, I will look around and soak in the ambiance of a mausoleum built to honor a man who never cared much for education. And as I make my way to the Stacks, filled with the spirit of that reckless hero, I’ll say: “No, this isn’t how Z. Smith would have wanted it to be. Not one bit. Especially that book cart. It really ought to be made into firewood.”