Fall of 1995, I moved into a four+ bedroom house in the Maple Leaf neighborhood of Seattle. I moved in with four female roommates: two UW buddies, and two young women we’d found via room postings on college bulletin boards. One was an 18 year old from the Tri-Cities, the other was a deadhead from Chicago who’d been forced to settle down by Jerry Garcia’s death.

Five women between the ages of 18 and 20 in one house was exactly the sort of bedlam you’d expect. The deadhead painted the basement sky blue with white clouds. We all went and bought matching Indian bedspreads. The fabric-covered lights in the front windows prompted several friends to comment that the place looked like a brothel. We liked it that way.

Naturally, any solid college house must have a name, and this one was christened “The Mothership.” The name served the place well, even easily lending itself to becoming a legacy: our next house was called “The Othership.” But that wasn’t until ‘96.

In 1995, it was all about The Mothership. My father, tickled by the name, offered to wood burn a sign for our door. He called one afternoon while I was out (no doubt I was getting stoned behind those campus columns), and spoke to my deadhead roommate. My dad knew that we didn’t pronounce the name properly — the “th” was softened, and the “r” eliminated.

“How should I spell it?” he asked my roommate.

“DA MUTHASHIP,” she answered.

And so it was.

I still have the sign my father made, and it still irritates me to no end that it’s “DA MUTHASHIP.” It’s inconstant. It should either be “DA MUDDASHIP” (ridiculous!) or “THA MUTHASHIP” (preferable). I blame not my father. I blame myself, the embryonic editor at age 20, for not being there to answer the phone.