Band
The Silver Death Cult
In high school I hung out with the geeks — misfits who were smart enough to be nerds, but most of us lacked the motivation. The one exception, a friend in physics class, was coding a fractal program on the one classroom computer while the rest of us suffered through the bad magic tricks and ukulele playing of a teacher desperate to keep our attention. He, myself, and another outcast friend were simply weird. We had similar senses of humor, quoting Monty Python and coming up with our own characters that would have been right at home on the show, often to very confused more mainstream classmates. We were all in band together where we were tolerated for our musical talents — I played tuba and sousaphone. I remember scratching off selected letters from a book we were reading in an English class “Giants in the Earth” by Ole Edvart Rølvaag to leave behind the revised title “ants in the Ear.” That one caught on with the whole class, much to the disappointment and frustration of the teacher.
We were smart, bored, and didn’t really fit in anywhere. I don’t even remember how the “cult” got started, but we decided to create something for ourselves, a group where we did belong. We called it the Silver Death Cult, probably because it sounded both mysterious and slightly frightening. There were two rules for entry into the organization:
- You had to stand on a young thistle plant (or devil weed as we called them — we HATED encountering them when mowing the lawn) for ten minutes without moving or flinching.
- You had to acquire an “I AM LOVED” button from a local Kansas City jewelry store without being seen by a sales person, take it to school and scrape off the paint to reveal the silver surface beneath during class time. Then wear the button as your badge of honor.
We three were the only members as our efforts to recruit were met with confusion and revulsion. Looking back now, maybe that was the point of the requirements — we created something for us and only us — to keep the world out and a place where we belonged. If you remember us, you probably remember us wrong. We were stranger than you knew, and prouder of it than we let on.
Before anyone asks, I do still have that button, so many years later. Maybe I should start wearing it again. I think I’ll skip the thistle standing now though.
