Mad Magazine has announced it will no longer publish monthly issues but instead will publish quarterly.

To be honest, I no longer read it but my 17 year old son does and my father did until he passed away.  My father had Alzheimers, and often toward the end he found a lot of the features very confusing, but he still enjoyed it and greeted each new issue with delight.

I have to admit that during my childhood, Mad Magazine was probably the greatest single formative influence in my life.  I was never much of a TV watcher and although I read many other comic books (Superman, Batman, Archie, etc) they were just something to pass the time.  I felt that Mad Magazine was somehow a window to a greater reality.  In time I discovered National Lampoon Magazine and science fiction pulp novels and then, I guess inevitably, I “grew up” and started reading “literature” and turned into the voracious reader I am now.  But, for what seemed then to be many long years of childhood, Mad Magazine was the staple of my intellectual diet.

Mad Magazine was also special to me because it was something shared between my little brother and I.  Older sisters and younger brothers are not always able to find common ground but Mad Magazine cemented our relationship.  We bought them and read them together.  Being very young, we often did not understand many of the cultural references and we spent many happy hours together trying to puzzle them out.

Mad Magazine was also a big part of our summer vacations.  My dad worked for the government and got 5 weeks of vacation every year and each summer he took them all at once so that our family could take epic road trips around the country.  My parents called them camping trips, but although we did have a camper and stayed in campgrounds, the purpose of these trips was really just to cover as much ground and see as many “educational” sites as possible.  This involved driving at least 500 miles every day and then jumping out of the car to visit and photograph every monument, museum, parade, battleground, rodeo, waterfall, diorama, zoo, scenic vista, stuffed buffalo, log cabin, changing of the guard, ghost town, canyon, old church, re-enactment, tee-pee, silver mine, geyser, civil war cannon, glacier, covered bridge, historic cemetery and tourist trap in the U.S. and Canada.  Needless to say, every summer my brother and I went numb after about 3 days of this, so we spent the rest of the 5 week trip curled up in the back seat re-reading our Mad Magazine collection.  To this day I cannot think of the Liberty Bell or Mount Rushmore except to remember seeing them with a well worn copy of Mad Magazine in my hand.

Another thing we did on these trips was “visit relatives.”  Most of these were little old ladies, so we were just expected to sit quietly for a few hours which wasn’t too bad.  What we were really worried about was meeting the relatives who had “nice kids our age.”    Most of our local cousins were dorky religious goody-goodies so we were really dreading these visits.  Imagine our delight when we discovered that our Arizona and Virginia cousins were actually even naughtier than we were and had vast collections of Mad Magazine paperbacks to share!  Aahh, so many happy memories!

So anyway, as I think back, many of the important events and relationships of my childhood involved Mad Magazine.  I know it influenced me deeply, even though, when I look at myself now, I seem to have become the kind of “dorky religious goody-goody” that would have appalled the 10 year old me.  I don’t know what to make of this radical transformation.

I guess that is part of why it makes me so sad to see Mad Magazine in decline.  I suppose I regard it as a fragile link back to the naughty little girl I used to be.

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