Reader's Digest Probes at Normal Folks' Nutty Center

By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 12, 2007

This month, the venerable Reader's Digest asks a personal question: "Are You Normal or Nuts?"

It's a thorny, perplexing question, but the Digest is courageous enough to answer it. The answer is: both.

Last year, the Digest asked readers to reveal (anonymously) the wacky things they do that secretly make them wonder , Am I crazy? And hundreds of readers were crazy enough to do just that. Then pop science writer William Speed Weed -- a man whose name alone qualifies him to be appointed federal drug czar -- took the readers' bizarre confessions to prominent psychiatrists and psychologists to find out if these people are "normal or nuts."

"I'm 47, and I love to rub satin," wrote one Digest reader. "As a child, I would rub the satin on my blanket while sucking my thumb. Now I carry a satin hankie with me everywhere, and I can rub it in my pocket. It always calms me down. Is that nuts?"

No, says Lori Perman, a therapist in Santa Monica, Calif. As an anti-stress device, satin-fondling beats smoking or overeating. "A little private satin rubbing never hurt anyone," writes Speed Weed.

"I count everything: the stairs at work (23), tiles on the ceiling (96), ruffles in the curtain (14)," confessed another Digest reader. "At the dentist, I even count the repetitions of the flowers on the wallpaper!"

No problem, says one shrink, who sees counting as merely a "quirk." But another shrink says the counter may suffer from an obsessive compulsive disorder called "arithmomania." My unsolicited advice: The reader should go to the first shrink and count his blessings.

"I'm a teenage girl, and it drives me crazy to have my food touching!" another reader writes. "I need separate plates for the meat, the potato, the veggie -- and a different fork too."

"Almost all our experts think that you should seek help," wrote Speed Weed. Alas, his experts did not agree on why. One said the girl may have anorexia nervosa. Another said she may have an "autism spectrum disorder." Speed Weed -- known to his fans as Amphetamine Reefer -- had more practical advice: "Ask yourself what will happen when you go out on a date. Will you demand that the kitchen send you five plates and five forks? Good luck getting a second date."

"I hate choosing things," complains a Digest reader who has a hard time picking one spoon out of a drawer full of utensils. "When I finally choose a spoon, I feel bad for all the others. I even sort of apologize to them: 'Sorry, guys. Next time!' Is this weird?"

" Hooo-eeee! Our experts made a smorgasbord out of you," writes Speed Weed, "and they each picked a different spoon." One expert, Eugene Beresin, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard, taunted the poor reader: "Do you apologize to rakes in the shed? Pencils on the desk? Products that you don't buy at the store?"

Hold it, doc. Are shrinks really supposed to mock patients' symptoms with sarcasm?

On and on it goes. One reader compulsively twirls his hair. Another can't bear to drive next to a car going the same speed. Another can't throw anything away. Another stays awake at night worrying about being captured and tortured by insurgents.

After a while, I couldn't help thinking: If readers of the staid, old Reader's Digest are this nutty, just how wacky are the folks who subscribe to, say, Penthouse or Ms. or the Weekly Standard? Maybe the whole human race is, as they say, a few pickles short of a full barrel. That would certainly help explain a great deal of human history.

Speed Weed -- also known as Meth Ganja -- seems to agree. "You are one crazy bunch of cats," he tells his readers. But then he adds this: "When you get right down to it, there's no such thing as 'normal.' "

If you're still worried about your own sanity, the Digest encourages you to send your symptoms to http://rd.com/nuts so Speed Weed can do this again in a future issue. Maybe I should write in, confess my obnoxious compulsion to make stupid jokes about a certain pop science writer's name -- you know, like Benzedrine Bud or Crank Sinsemilla. Hooo-eeee! Is that normal or nuts?

Rock Stars Gone Buh-Bye?

While Reader's Digest reveals that its readers are nutty, Spin, the rock magazine, laments that today's rock stars are just too damn normal. They're dull. They don't look weird enough, and they behave distressingly well.

"Seemingly overnight, we find ourselves in an era in which rockers seem woefully generic, as if they've all gone under the knife to have their charisma surgically removed," writes David Browne, whose name, alas, fails to inspire any stupid jokes. "Rock stars don't have to be party-till-you-puke animals -- professionalism has its merits, too -- but could it hurt for some of the new breed to have personality?"

"A lot of these new bands, they're not into it," explains Austin Winkler, the lead singer of Hinder. "It's a job. They do their thing and go back to the tour bus and play PlayStation."

Browne blames this sad state of affairs on commercialism: "Who wants to see a lucrative chance to place a song in a commercial or on an episode of Grey's Anatomy fall through because of naughty behavior?"

Bret Michaels, identified as "the frontman for '80s poodle rockers Poison," has a different idea. He blames the decline of the rock star on Kurt Cobain, the superstar lead singer of Nirvana, who committed suicide in 1994.

"His depression was real," Michaels says. "But that depression led a lot of bands to where we are today. They're faking their depression. . . . It's considered uncool if you act like you're having a good time."

Rock stars faking depression? Boy, is that depressing. As if to show just how bad things have gotten, Spin's cover is a picture of pathetic shock-rock has-been Marilyn Manson and the question: "The Last Rock Star?"

Good grief, let's hope not. Come back, Jerry Lee Lewis. All is forgiven.