On Wearing Your Pink

5-Hour Energy: "You don't need to like us, just buy this and make us pay for breast cancer research. We know you like that better than us."




Listen, I'm going to buy one of your energy shots. Because I work eight hours and I'd still like the ability to go out and get drunk once in a while after a snack and a brief shower. Energy shots are good for this.

After, I'm going to find a cancer researcher, and I'm going to hand her $4.25. Because I want a cure for cancer. Or a fully-reversing treatment. Or therapy. Not just a stopgap, but a real, solid end to it as a concerning threat. Maybe she'll use it to buy lunch. Maybe she pays for parking. Maybe she leaves it on the counter and oesn't touch it out of confusion and moderate trepidation until she's 35¢ short of a Pop-Tart from the lab vending machine.

I have no illusions that my money would be less than a molecule in a drop in a bucket in an ocean, but maybe that $4.25 means the petty cash drawer lasts longer, and someone gets more money left in their budget at the end of the year. Maybe the excess gets blown on a party where someone has an epiphany and scrawls a formula on the wall still wearing their lampshade as a helmet.

Or maybe everyone just agrees to hand money to scientists and let them do their jobs because 13% of us are slated to die from it. In fact, if I can fund a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's, I'm going to be handsome, vivacious, and ornery until I'm 135.

I want to be 135.

And I don't need a pink magnet on my energy shot to guilt me into it.