The Chain Stops Here--Then Again, Maybe Not

I am not superstitious. So usually, when I get one of those silly chain letters advising me that if I pass it on to five other persons I will have good luck, within the week, and if I don’t--if I break the chain--I will have bad luck, I toss it.

However, I have received one from my friend Jonathan Kirsch, the distinguished attorney and literary person, a man who is by no means silly.

Kirsch encloses a note of instruction: “This letter originated in the Netherlands, and has been passed around the world at least 20 times, bringing good luck to everyone who passed it on. The one who breaks the chain will have bad luck. Do not keep this letter. Do not send money. Just have a wonderful efficient secretary make four additional copies and send it to five of your friends to whom you wish good luck. You will see that something good happens to you four days from now if the chain is not broken. This is not a joke. You will receive good luck in four days.”

Also enclosed are 28 previous letters, each signed by one person and addressed to five other persons. Each succeeding letter is signed by one of those five persons, and addressed to five others, and so on, down to Mr. Kirsch, whose letter is addressed to four other persons besides me.

If none of us breaks the chain, our letters will go out to 25 new persons, and theirs will go out to 125, and so on.

As I say, I would consider this a nonsensical waste of time, except for the source of my letter, and the caliber of other persons who have signed the previous letters. Most are well-known persons in the media, publishing and related fields. Also, there is a charming self-conscious flippancy in their notes of transmittal.

The first one says, “I can’t believe I’m sending this.” The second says, “Sorry about this . . . but the game must go on.” Another says, “What the hell . . . better safe than sorry!”

One ventures into the philosophical: “We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems. Yours in progress.”

But if all the persons who received letters through this chain have responded by sending them on to five other prominent persons in the aforementioned fields, and so on, they would soon have run out of prominent persons (or any other persons) in any field.

Out of respect for their privacy, I will not name any of the participants in this whimsy. One editor received this message from a previous person in the chain: “My astrologer and psychic Tarot card reader both insisted I had to pass this on.” He in turn sent the letter to five others with this note: “Consider the source I got it from and go figure: How can it hurt?”

And one of the five he in turn addressed the letter to sent it on to five others with this confession: “A man will do anything out of fear.”

One of those five couldn’t resist a transcontinental slur in her message: “It’s a comfort to know that not all strange behavior commences in California.”

Sometimes the messages develop continuity: A New York newspaperwoman wrote, “Having never been on the ‘A’ party list, I’m too flattered to decline the invitation,” and one of her addressees, a professor of journalism, wrote, in turn, “Journalists? ‘A’ list? Unlikely. But the cause is a worthy one.”

A West Coast publicity manager for a New York publishing firm was the one who addressed the letter to Kirsch, with the message: “ Oy vey --this is the third one of these I’ve received--I should be really lucky by now. At least we’re in tremendous company!”

Kirsch’s letter is the 29th in the chain. Mine, if I were to comply, would be the 30th. However, each letter represents only one of a group of five persons addressed in the previous letter, each of whom would have addressed five other persons, and on ad infinitum.

I am a dunce at mathematics, but it seemed to me that the number of people who had already received the letter, assuming that no one had broken the chain, might be quite large. I phoned my son, Curt, who enjoys toying with numbers, and asked him what the total would be if a letter began with one person, then five, then 25, and on through 30 permutations.

He tinkered with his calculator for a few minutes. Then he said, “It would be 232,830,643,650,000,000,000 people. That’s several billion times the population of the Earth.”

Oy vey! That’s a lot of good luck.

Oh, well, what the heck--it can’t hurt.