Mom worked for a while on the University of Missouri college humor magazine, ShowMe. A remarkable number of college stories stem from the nine months she worked there.

Before she landed there at UofM in Columbia MO (Mizzou), Mom went to a local college for two years where she wrote a column for the school paper. It was very well received.

I recently re-read some old issues of the paper. Her column recieved excellent reviews in the letters to the editor. On this most recent reading I realized those letters came from her childhood friends. They were clever: they each changed one letter of their last names to ensure anonymity, and it worked for almost 75 years. They were life-long friends as well: “Aunt” Nancy, Claudette, and others.

During this time, Mom wrote a funny letter to the editor of ShowMe. When she left St. Louis for the University of Missouri in Columbia (“Mizzou”) two years later, the staff still remembered the letter.

So, when she got to Mizzou, she submitted a funny article for ShowMe titled “I Hate Men”. Again, it got attention in the letters to the editor — legit letters from other college humor magazines asking to reprint it. Plus, someone wrote a parody, and it doesn’t get better than that.

Suddenly she was on the masthead. She was in charge of publicity.

I imagine she did nothing, because Showme was about to become a scandal.

Here is the impossibly perfect cousin Cindy. Blonde, petite, sporting a mod ‘60’s turtleneck, not a nonsensical purple/white number.

She is actually my second cousin. I believe her grandmother was Jerry’s Mad Aunt Jo, my grandfather’s sister. Her mother was the sympathetic woman Mom stayed with during part of the separation.

The only other thing revealed about her in Mom’s letters was that SHE DID NOT LIKE ME. Evidently she would only come over to play if my maternal grandfather was visiting from Saint Louis. I don’t know what his appeal was, unless she was missing an alcoholic grandfather.

Didn’t like me. Hmpf. Look closely at that look on her face. She looks sweet until you look at her eyes.

Remember I thought my Mom and Dad met when he drove her back from Columbia, MO when her sister died? And I couldn’t understand how Dead Sister Dolores was referenced in their letters?

I have now developed a forensic reconstruction of the events of Mom’s life from college in 1954 to her death in 2008.

The timeline reveals that Mom and Dad had been dating six months, they had a spat, cards referencing this Mysterious Squabble were sent, Dad reacted by writing and not sending a letter declaring his love, and Mom reacted by going to a dance without him, where she was swept off her feet by my father, Jerry (OG father).

The timeline revealed that Dolores died soon after THAT meeting — just days after, according to my spreadhseet.

Can you imagine though? A man dances with you, kisses you at the end of the dance, tells you he’s going to marry you at the end of the evening, then just days later helps you through a devastating emotional event? She must have been out of her mind with love. And … just out of her mind generally to marry him just six months later. If I’d been there I’d have said, “What are you thinking, Margi?”

So that clears that up: a paternal figure drove her home in that crisis. I suppose I should have asked which one.

A friend at work described me as a perfectionist, and it made me think … am I? Still?

I can see how co-workers see me as a perfectionist. I volunteer to do quality checks on their work, and my quality checks are brutal beat downs that include unsolicited lessons on colons vs semi-colons.

Yet my emails listing their errors are full of typos and sentence fragments. Hypercritical for them, hypocritical for me. I don’t expect perfection in myself.

I find physical perfection off-putting. Physically perfect people are not to be trusted. I don’t expect physical perfection in myself and find it repellent in others.

Perhaps I am following Mom’s path. She was a life-long perfectionist, and then she slacked off. I remember the day I was wallpapering her bathroom and she said, “Oh, it doesn’t need to line up exactly.” I spun around and gaped at her, and she explained she was giving up on perfection in her old age. I believe she was sixty.

I wonder if when I was young, I had physical imperfections I could count on two hands, for perfection was attainable. Now that I’m old I can see how futile it is. I wonder if there are any aged perfectionists. They must be tremendously unhappy.