A woman approached me on New York City's Avenue of the Americas, pen and clipboard in hand. Was this a Moonie? She was young and perky. I was older and breathing. Which was about the only thing she required.

"Would you be interested in participating in a Time-Life marketing survey?" she asked. "We'll give you a nice free gift."

"How nice is nice?" I said.

"Pretty nice," she replied.

I followed her into the vast Time-Life building, into an elevator, and down a long, dim hallway. I was told to sit and wait on a plastic chair next to two other female inductees, both clutching shopping bags. We glanced at each other, shamefaced. We didn't want to admit we had come this far for a free mystery gift.

Next we were ushered into a small, windowless room filled with chairs and tables. On the tables lay push-button gizmos, sheets of paper, and number two pencils. "You will be shown slides," a voice said from behind us. Our job was to vote our preferences by pushing buttons.

The first slides asked us to categorize ourselves, in terms of our age, marital and parental status, education level, and the number of magazines we purchased each month. (The third slide included the word "separate," spelled s-e-p-e-r-a-t-e.) We were asked to push a red button as soon as we could spot three magazines -- People, Time, Life -- out of a hodgepodge of about a dozen publications sandwiched together the way they might appear on a newsstand. Then two different Life covers flashed on the screen, both concerning the same story: a sighting of the Virgin Mary on a hillside in Yugoslavia.

Which cover photo did we prefer -- the one with a woman holding up a child to kiss the hand of the Virgin Mary statue? Or the one with the same statue alone, facing the opposite direction?

I voted for the woman and child, all the while wondering just how far this finger-to-the-wind journalism had gone. (All the way to titles, I would learn later; according to a source at Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner's new men's magazine, due to appear in a year or so, remains unnamed after the first title Wenner picked wasn't a hit with a focus group.) What's next, I wondered: a booth in every mall, where shoppers vote for more stories on Dolly Parton or plastic surgery or women who love men who once loved women who hate men?

The lights went on. We had a few moments to jot down some of our thoughts. Then we were led past cardboard boxes to cluttered desk. We were given a choice between a sports-blooper video, a photo frame, and a pocket calculator. I took the calculator and ran.

I forgot about the incident until July, when I went to my favorite newsstand, and there it was, the cover I'd chosen: the "Do You Believe in Miracles?" story, with the photo of the child kissing the statue. On page twenty-eight was the picture I had voted against.

I won! I guess.

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