Sentient buildings on Broadway?
Well, that's one explanation.

The text alert from the Southeast Missourian lit up my phone Tuesday night.

A building on Broadway had partially collapsed.

While some people may think the reason for this structural failure might be as simple as an aging brick building combined with recent heavy rains, I have a more logical explanation.

The buildings along Broadway are actually sentient.

Yes, I believe these blocks of buildings are cognizant creatures who are able to communicate with one another and frankly, they've have seen the writing on the wall.

They know the University and its demolition crews are headed their way, ready to tear them to pieces with heavy equipment and haul their remains to an unmarked grave in a landfill somewhere in Southeast Missouri. They know it's going to happen, because they've seen it happen to their friends.

Here today, a parking lot tomorrow. A fountain, if they're lucky.

And they're scared.

I'm sure this poor building heard the rumors. It heard the whispers coming down the block from the west.

"The University is coming! The University is coming!"

This particular building is no spring-chicken. It has seen a lot of years of wear and tear. It doesn't help that it is nowhere near the prettiest structure on Broadway. It certainly isn't the kind of building that the University would ever consider keeping. The faux-log cabin look that has been applied to the Broadway side of this structure does not really fit in with The Dome and its other properties.

No, if the University is indeed working its way down Broadway -- rumored to soon be rechristened SEMOway -- then this building would be too expensive to retrofit into any functional use for the Lords of Learning encroaching from the local franchise of the Ivory Tower.

This building probably realized that it was just a matter of time before the University would send in the heavy equipment with their steel toothed buckets eager to gnash and shred the structure from joist to joist and floor to floor in an orgy of mechanized blood-lust. The building believed its fate was to be a parking lot and the building was scared.

The building was really scared.

It quivered with fright on its foundation grimly anticipating its own horrible demise. It had been dwelling on the situation for years even before the apartment building on Ellis just off Broadway committed suicide.

And that's when it happened on Tuesday evening about 8:30.

In its own fashion, the building succumbed to its fear of demolition and did what most sentient creatures do when faced with what they believe is their own imminent death.

It peed itself.