ShowMe: part the second

ShowMe had a variety of editors, but it was always a college humor magazine. It always had photos of pretty co-eds, jokes, cartoons, and a pre-digital layout.

It had to be profitable, so there were also lots of ads, sex references, and pandering to college rivalries (lots of references to how vacuous the girls at nearby Stephens College were).

With those constants, every editor put a stamp on the tone of the magazine.

One didn’t even use his name. He went by ECAT. I only have one ECAT edition.

Next there was a duo: Skip and Nanci. Skip and Nanci included personal essays from marginalized students. Written exposes of fraternity anti-Asian sentiments, a veteran’s experiences in Korea, an Indian student‎’s experiences at home. Slip and Nanci were great. I believe it was during their oversight that this appeared under every masthead.

And things were censored. There was a Board that governed what went in the magazine, and they would point to the offending part in the literal cut-and paste, and the editors would snip a joke or cartoon from a different page and paste it on top.

Most of the content went over my teenaged brain, but I do remember I caught on to one mildly dirty joke. Dick Noel had a running column in which he addressed his readers as “mothafs”.

I checked the dictionary. No entry for mothaf. Sometimes it was spelled mothaff. Eventually, the penny dropped.

“Mom, I just realized Mothaf is short for Motherf … you know.”

She argued. I showed her multiple examples of Mothaf in context. She was astonished at first, then said, “Good for you,” pleased I supposed for being less innocent than she was at that age.

The final mothaf looked like this.

After co-editors Skip and Nancy left, a new editor (named, confusingly, Noel Tomas) came along. He defiantly doubled down on the sex references and the gross-out comics. No more essays on the student experience. The post-Sputnik November issue was funny, but the Christmas one went so far as to print A) photos of fellow journalism students shirtless, on the beach, drinking beer, and B) these ads:

I KNOW. I can publish that, because I have a Mature WordPress designation, but the Board didn’t catch it until after it went to Press.

What happened next would change the course of Mom’s life.