One of the few things I wait for and enjoy on television is the appearance at the end of 60 Minutes of Andy Rooney.  I have a great deal of brotherly feeling for this curmudgeon because I feel curmudgeonly a lot of times although it might merely be that we share age and a lot of the same experiences.

One of the things that cause amusement and derision on my part is the radio and the stations that have their way paid for them by hucksters who sell useless products, particularly of the medicinal sort.  Someone, sometime and somewhere gave the correct diagnosis of the snookered masses that support these nostrums – if they worked or if only one of them worked, then the rest would go out of business.  These over-the-counter pills and other miracle producing products fill the shelves of the “drug” stores that could not sell this stuff as drugs because they are not drugs but mostly sugar, paste and some flavoring.  Think of the snake-oil salesmen here.

It has probably been around for thousands of years.  There is this type of mendacious merchant who fills a little bottle or makes up little pills and make claims for the miracles performed if you just buy one and try it.  Better yet, buy this month’s supply and take regularly and see the difference.  The difference is that you see is less money in your pocket and the supply runs out without any of the promised changes in your life.  We are at the mercy of sweet-talking con-artists who catch us when we are weakest and sell us things they need to get rid of and that we will never use as directed to get the promised results.  It is sort of a dance we do with people smarter than we are because it is entertaining to watch them and suddenly we fall for their patter and find ourselves feeding money into their machine. They leave shortly after and we never see them again.

Speaking of machines – have you noticed the appearance in many new venues of the claw device that you operate on the outside to catch, snag and drop into a chute some pretty toy that falls into your hands?  It costs plenty to operate that surly machine that does not do nearly so well as your eyes and soft-mind tells you that it will.  So you drop your coins (or is it dollars) into the proper slot, operate the claw and usually fall for the subliminal call to try again for the odds are in your favor that you actually will snatch out a valueless toy from the bin.

And that brings up another device to separate you from your money that has been around for ages.  That is the gambler who sets up three walnuts with a pea under one of them.  You gamble that your eyes are quicker than his hands and you put your money down and the pea is not where you thought it was. Gotcha again!