I don’t usually read The Sun, but sometimes I’ll pick up a copy just to read the headlines. I didn’t last Monday because I had a date with destiny at Dunkin’ Donuts in Dryden, but I should have. By midday, five or six people had called me about an important article claiming that Cornell students “don’t know jack” about history.

People called me because I’m a history major, and somehow this was supposed to make us look really bad.

I don’t think it does. According to the study conducted by the University of Connecticut, Cornell students all failed this test they distributed. Full disclosure: I was supposed to hand out twenty of those questionnaires and get some cash in return. I handed out two and played Scantron graffiti with the rest.

Cornell students don’t know history ... Thanks, University of Connecticut. But they know other things. They know how to mix a great Purell and tonic. They also know about cold weather.

One of the worst things about Sun columns is when they say that it’s cold in Ithaca. Every columnist feels obligated to say that it’s cold. Do you know how we know that you have nothing to write about? You’re writing about cold weather, champ.

I associate history with Manos Diner because that’s where I cram for those dreaded history tests. Last week, Missy Kurzweil, whom I don’t really know but I hear is perfectly delightful (hint: Missy — you owe me a shoutout/publicly chronicled date), launched a completely unfair attack on Manos. Come on, Missy. You can do better.

I started going to Manos late at night my sophomore year. My first few times, I felt like Columbus crossing the Atlantic, lumbering down a darkened Route 13 past Wegmans and Taco Bell into the unknown domain that made Missy miserable. As I sailed my black Jeep of a Santa Maria through emerald green traffic lights, I could only think of the spices and jewels awaiting me at the other end of my voyage. My fingers fluttered, my umbrage ululated as I pulled into the parking lot that first time.

My least favorite part of Ithaca is that the American cheese is white. American cheese is supposed to be yellow with a tinge of orange, not white. So when I ordered my first Manos grilled cheese, and it came out with white cheese, I was apprehensive.

As I quaked in my cherry-colored boots, the food attendant placed my meal in front of me. On a simple, chipped white plate sat a sandwich, white bread and white cheese, all of it in fact a bit off-white. I learned later, after much inquisition, that the sandwich was off-white because Manos’ chef dropped a cigarette in the deep fryer, which discolored the usually snow-white meal.

Then I heard a story that changed my life. My food attendant told me that she was getting married the next day, to the chef. That’s why the chef was smoking in the kitchen — he was nervous, I realized later, about getting married.

Marriage, from my understanding, means a lot of things. It means sharing a home with someone you love. It means putting both your names on a car loan. It means hiding parking tickets from your lover because you know the pain they will cause her. And that’s what the chef, in his heart, scarred by love and scared by marriage, couldn’t get out of his mind.

Manos looks like an ordinary diner, with decrepit bathrooms, awful homefries — “crispy” is a lie, the homefries are terrible — and admirably ample parking. But Manos is more than that. It’s a place where we build our history together, as Cornell students, as Americans, as diners.

That’s why I get irritated when America-hating liberals from the University of Connecticut tell me that Cornell students don’t know history. Sure, some Cornell students couldn’t attribute the line “all men are created equal” to the Declaration of Independence, but, really, who cares? One of the joys of American history is that it’s constantly changing. “All men are created equal” means something different now than it did when Jefferson first put feather to parchment and scrawled those magical words. Men now includes women. Equal now actually means sort of equal.

Just like all those phrases mean different things now, just like Manos means something different to you after five minutes of reading filler, history means something different to each and every one of us. And that’s another reason why American history is great.

And then I found five dollars.

Justin Weitz is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at jdw42@cornell.edu. Free Weitz appears alternate Wednesdays.