THE BELL CURVE -- joseph n. bell

On the counter in our kitchen rests a small bowl used mostly for

accessory salads or condiments. It is presently full of cheap gin.

Submerged in the gin are several dozen golden raisins. Twice a day, I

reach into this gooey mess and pluck out five raisins, which I eat. I

feel pretty silly doing this, but so far that hasn’t stopped me.

I am eating raisins soaked in gin because (1) my right leg hurts enough,

presumably from arthritis, that it has interfered with my tennis, and (2)

I have been forced in self-defense to read the weekly health sections of

the Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register.

I would normally not read the health sections. I read them only because

my wife devours them avidly and uses the information thus gleaned to urge

various diets, medication and behavior modifications on me. She has yet

to meet a health tip she doesn’t embrace -- mostly for me -- with a kind

of missionary zeal. So unless I read these sections and know the source

of her information, I am unable to turn away these invasions of my

lifestyle.

All this has made me highly sympathetic to the tribes of deepest Africa

who were getting along fine until the missionaries appeared.

However, there is a constant danger that one of these nostrums I scan in

self-defense will hit me in a vulnerable place. And that’s what happened

with the raisins in the gin.

It all started when a woman reader wrote a letter to a column in the

Times called “People’s Pharmacy,” in which she claimed to have found

relief from crippling arthritis by eating gin-soaked raisins. Several

weeks later, a man with arthritic knees wrote to the same column claiming

he had tried this regimen with results that “are nothing short of a

miracle.”

So what’s a guy who just had to quit a tennis match in the middle of the

third set when his knee gave way supposed to do? Pay $100 a month to some

pharmaceutical house that is making a 2,000% profit on his purchase that

might be no help at all? Or buy a box of golden raisins (I already had

the gin) for two bucks. So I bought the raisins.

This was even far enough off the wall for my wife that she didn’t tell me

about it. I found the gin-soaked raisin item by myself.

I’ve only been on this for a week, and so far nothing has happened. But I

don’t consider that a fair trial. Besides, it isn’t costing me much of

anything, and I’ve developed a real fondness for raisins soaked in gin

that may very well carry over after my knee is sound again. It has also

set me to thinking about easy fixes.

I had never before really understood the appeal of a snake oil salesmen

selling patent medicine off the back of his truck to gullible citizens

for whom I felt only contempt. No more.

Now, I’d probably buy his swamp water on the million-to-one chance he was

telling the truth or the placebo effect would work some sort of miracle.

And that led me to the recognition of how persistently most of us are

looking for the quick fix.

Why else would anyone buy a lottery ticket? The chances of winning are

roughly equivalent to being struck by lightning. But most lottery tickets

are bought by poor people who see no other way out of poverty. The

lottery is the only dream left to them. That’s also why quiz shows that

create instant millionaires are suddenly all the rage again. And why TV

evangelists bring in millions of dollars from troubled listeners with

promises of instant redemption.

It’s why movies about bumbling and unattractive people who go through a

miraculous transformation or wimpy football walk-ons who score the

winning touchdown or the peasant girl who gets the king always do well.

They address perfectly legitimate human longings, then satisfy them with

a quick fix.

It’s why time after time at writing seminars I addressed it was clear

that the people who paid to come didn’t want to hear about the necessary

sweat over a word processor and the long odds to be faced in selling

their work; they wanted to hear about the mother with seven kids who

wrote a book on the kitchen table at night and sold it to the movies.

These human longings and needs for a quick fix are exploited mercilessly

by the snake oil salesmen of our world, mostly working with sophisticated

data through high-powered advertising agencies.

Every once in awhile, the snake oil gets so creative it has to be

admired. Like the man who ran a classified ad in the New York Times that

said simply: “You have 72 hours to send your dollar to Box (whatever).”

Many thousands of dollars came in before the ad was pulled by authorities

who could find no law that was being broken.

When things are going well, we can take the elitist high road of reason

and credibility toward the quick fixes. But when the knee goes out in the

middle of a tennis match, we start looking to the gin-soaked raisins. A

yearlong program of diet and medication looks much less attractive than a

box of raisins that will have me back on the court at full strength in no

time.

And now something new has been added. While I was writing this, my wife

appeared with a page from the current issue of Newsweek. An elderly lady

in Michigan began buying tart red cherry juice by the case because

drinking a glass a day eased her arthritis. Now some 200 of her friends

and neighbors are doing the same thing with the same results, and

scientists are trying to figure out why.

I don’t see any reason why gin, raisins and cherry juice won’t mix

satisfactorily. I just hope I don’t have to send to Michigan for the

cherry juice.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a Santa Ana Heights resident. His column runs

Thursdays.