We all first discover punk rock differently. When I was 12 I was at Busch Gardens in Florida with my parents and saw a cool-as-fuck teenage punk/industrial couple holding hands at the theme park. The girl was wearing a Dead Kennedys Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death t-shirt and the guy was wearing a Ministry shirt. I bought cassettes of both bands the next day at whatever Florida’s version of Sam Goody was. “Holiday In Cambodia” instantly replaced Skid Row’s “I Remember You” as my favorite song ever.

A 20-year-old from Indianapolis named Taylor-Ruth has a much cooler story — discovering Dead Kennedys at the library when she was in 5th grade, and on September 26 of that year she sat down to write pretty much the best grade-school letter anyone has ever written. Though the note was posted to her tumblr last year, it was recently retweeted by Jason Isbell, and the other day Devin Faraci of Badass Digest did some sleuthing to piece it all together.

Rock on, Taylor-Ruth, Jello would be proud. And you were totally right about those fucking fascists.

Here’s her letter (and hey, if it ends up being fake and actually written by a 73-year-old man between library games of pinochle, then whatever, it’s still cool and you need to go outside and get some air):





