Science = Death

I know this might be hard for you to swallow, but I haven’t always been this effortlessly cool and in the know. Back in the day when I was just little fifteen year old Sarah, all Blossom-banged and beaded-necklace-bedecked, I spent most of my time wearing my Converse, making mix tapes, and working hard on compiling cred.

Sometimes cred came easy, because let’s face it, I’m smart and clever and quick on the uptake, but there were other times when cred was so elusive, so slippery, and I chased it so hard, only to fall on my face, usually in front of other, cooler, taller people. Like the time I went to some concert that was just brimming with people with far more cred than I, and I spent the whole time not listening to the music, but taking mental notes on what all these cool people did and said and wore. One really cool-looking guy walked past me wearing a black t-shirt with a huge triangle on it, and underneath was what I thought read “Science = Death.”

This struck me as very cool, despite the fact that I had no idea what it meant, but you know, I was young, and that hadn’t stopped me from finishing The Crying of Lot 49, so I was down with it. Science = Death! Hell yeah it did, man! I wrote this all over my notebooks in black Sharpie marker, triangle and all—especially my chemistry notebook, which I thought was just too rich—and when stupid preppy kids asked me what it meant, I just sort of rolled my eyes and hoped to God they wouldn’t press the issue, because everyone knows the number one secret to cred is casting doubt on other people’s cred.

I forgot all about Science = Death until my freshman year of college, when I noticed a flyer in my dorm for an AIDS Awareness rally. I couldn’t figure out why it looked familiar, until I saw the triangle, and it all suddenly clicked. It wasn’t Science = Death, it was Silence = Death. Which, you know, makes a lot more sense.