Phone Schmoes On Wheels, Or Maybe Not

Ask any driver for the thing that is most likely to induce a mood swing while motoring and the answer might take a minute --- but not because it’s hard to come up with something.

For a long time, my own pet peeve as a driver involved a split decision: finding myself in front of a tailgater or behind some lunkhead who waited until the last nanosecond to signal a turn, if he or she signaled at all. The perfect storm would have me sandwiched between them.

But because technology seemingly rules our lives and even our gripes, at some point, I grew increasingly bothered by phone schmoes on wheels --- drivers who feel the need to stay in touch by yakking on a cellular telephone.

Admittedly, it wasn’t just the troubling idea that driving near somebody who may be distracted puts you in harm’s way as effectively as sharing the road with a person who is drunk or drugged.

After all, when it comes to pure distraction, you can lose your focus while holding a phone conversation that involves one hand or none. There are other causes, too, as any “Seinfeld” fan well knows. In an episode of that classic TV series, Kramer and Jerry are taking George Costanza’s auto to the car wash but end up in a crash after catching sight of Sue Ellen Mischke’s sidewalk stroll in a bra.

So, stuff happens.

Part of what would bother me whenever I looked in the rear view mirror and saw a driver gabbing on a hand-held phone was the fact that the operator of the vehicle directly behind me was not only a fool but a law-breaking fool, at that.

According to the Governors Highway Safety Association website, New York is one of eight states in the U.S. that prohibit all drivers from using hand-held cellphones while driving. Besides the other seven (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington), places where you can land in hot water for using a hand-held phone while driving also include the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands.

An initial reading of the list left me a bit baffled, as I wondered why only eight states have such a law. I asked myself: when the well-paid legislators in the other 42 aren’t on recess or giving themselves a raise, what kind of laws are they making, if not this one?

I've since learned that Utah qualifies as a ninth of sorts. You can be charged with careless driving for talking on a cellphone, if you also commit a moving violation other than speeding.

Finding Massachusetts missing from the GHSA's list surprised me, if only because I've always thought of it as a place where many intelligent people reside. Further digging showed that law-wise, a youth movement of sorts is under way there --- with a focus on texting messages, not making calls.

Come October, it will be unlawful for anyone under 18 to use a cellphone -- banning text and talk -- while driving in the Bay State, as though age makes a difference in distracted driving. Older motorists will still be able to engage in hand-held phone talk, but they'll run the risk of a fine if they're caught sending a text message.

Frankly, I'd thought better of Massachusetts.

Since New York is one of the enlightened eight states that prohibit hand-held phones altogether while driving, it’s another reason to be glad I live here, since I happen to believe that it’s better to have a law that discourages dangerous behavior than not to have it.

Of course, the best strategy would be to ban all phone use behind the steering wheel. As noted in a Boston Globe report about the new law in Massachusetts, the National Safety Council blames 28 percent of motor vehicle accidents on distractions due to cellphone use while driving.

Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about the need for another law that would boost public safety and help reduce traffic accidents -- as well as cut the chances of a stroke among drivers with high blood pressure -- while creating fairness in New York's existing law about cellphone use.

In short, I’m hoping for a law that would put pedestrians on the hook, too.

The thought hit me recently, as I was waiting at a traffic light to turn onto Sunrise Highway. When the red turned green for me, a fellow suddenly appeared from the right and kept on walking, moving from one corner to the other in front of my car without regard for right of way or life and limb. If anything, he reduced his pace after stepping into the street.

The jaywalker was wearing a business suit, but the thing he was wrapped up in was conversation --- with whoever was on the other end of his cellphone. Before I proceeded to drive on, I suggested that he stay off the phone when crossing the street and the shouted response was a vulgar blend of outrage and profanity. But the message was clear: who was I to tell him anything, much less how to use his phone?

I don’t doubt that the exchange was out of the man’s head by the time he returned to his office. But for me, it was a true epiphany. Mark Twain wrote about the riverboat pilot who, once he learns the river, can never see it again the same way. Well, I’ve had a revelation of my own regarding pedestrians. Where once I was blind, now I can see --- all the phone schmoes on foot who saunter across the street without a hint of awareness as they talk or text en route to their destination, which, hopefully, will not become the nearest hospital.

I fail to see how a cordless phone in hand makes somebody a walking “Stop” sign while crossing the street. At this sorry time in civilization, when holding a door for the next person is a chore, it's hardly a safe bet that an oncoming motorist who is already exceeding the speed limit will be inclined to show more care -- and smarts -- than the distracted pedestrian.

Under New York State law, drivers at an intersection without a traffic signal must yield to pedestrians. But a law to keep the schmoes off the phone when they step onto the road seems only fair --- and more so than the legal one-way street on which we currently travel.

Old Game's Name For Digital Age Dopes

When I was a kid, the major toy companies were Marx, Remco, Mattel and Ideal.

Unlike Ralphie in “A Christmas Story,” the 1983 movie based on the works of radio storyteller Jean Shepherd, I never went to bed with dreams of finding a Daisy BB air rifle under the Christmas tree.

No, my dreams were made of the stuff provided by the TV commercials on behalf of those four toy companies back in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

I remember Ideal for the talking Robert the Robot, which, as I found out later, was the cause of my father and grandfather having to go on a hunt that ultimately proved successful without much time to spare one Christmas Eve night.

In those days long before action figures, I thought that Marx had the best toy soldiers, along with the similarly-sized plastic likenesses of characters such as Tom Corbett and Roy Rogers, space cadet and king of the cowboys, respectively. Others, like my friend and neighbor, Mike Festa, recall Marx for The Great Garloo, a 24-inch green-skinned monster of a toy robot that paved the way for the Incredible Hulk.

Mattel gave girls Barbie dolls, but it also armed boys of a certain age with some great cap pistols -- in particular, the Shootin’ Shell and Fanner lines -- and a hard plastic weapon known as the Thunder Burp Gun, a sort of tommy gun that made a lengthy firing sound, yet didn’t involve caps or need batteries. Among the kids in my neighborhood of Elmhurst, NY, that was the gun you wanted for Christmas, if you didn’t already have one.

Remco produced some wonderful toys and the one that scored highest with me was something called the Radar Rocket Cannon, a yellow-and-black plastic console equipped with “radar,” a communications component, such as it was, and the capability to launch a toy airplane --- just the thing, I thought, to obliterate an enemy army of Marx foot soldiers.

But I also remember that Remco made something called Shmo --- a board game in which the object was not to become a Shmo. If anyone needed to know why not, the game was contained in a box with an illustration of a rather dopey-looking fellow about to step into an open manhole. A word balloon said it all: “I’m a shmo and that ain’t good.”

So, to me, "shmo" was another four-letter word for "jerk" and not to be confused with "shmoo," which was the name for some silly but lovable creatures in the "Li'l Abner" comic strip. There's a difference, since I can't say that I find jerks lovable.

As the years passed, I forgot about some of the games I had played as a kid and Shmo was one of them. But then something made its name pop up again in my head and that memory trigger was the cellphone.

I don’t remember when or where exactly, but I know that I must have been waiting on a line somewhere --- most likely, in a supermarket or at the post office when the word “shmo” came back to me. Then again, maybe I was in a store, trying to pick out a greeting card that had just the right message. All I know is that suddenly, I was being subjected to somebody else’s conversation, as they carried on with a cellphone. It was as though I had been pulled into a telephone booth against my will.

Once there, I knew not the name of my abductor, but with a slightly different spelling and the addition of a noun-turned-adjective, I could brand the species: phone schmoe.

If only the one-sided conversation was worth sharing, I might not have minded so much having the peace of my personal space hijacked by a phone schmoe.

Unfortunately, I’ve since determined that there’s really no redeeming value in being forced to listen to other people who either believe they’re doing us a favor or simply don’t care as they blab away.

One of the early examples took place some years ago in a Rockville Centre restaurant, where My Wonderful Wife Peg and I were enjoying dinner until some fool seated alone at a nearby table decided that he had been waiting too long for his meal, so he pulled out his cellphone and called a friend -- or therapist -- to vent his frustration, loudly and at great length.

Whether a coincidence or not, his food was served shortly thereafter. Thankfully, he didn't make a second call to file a review.

Up until now, I have referred to the mobile communications device wielded by the self-absorbed as a "cellphone." But, in truth, more often -- and quite ironically -- the thing in use proves to be a "smartphone," the generic term for a BlackBerry, which combines the features of a computer with those of a cellphone.

While the technology may be smart, that doesn't necessarily trickle down to the impolite user, however.

On the contrary, phone schmoes like the impatient diner call to mind Adam Sandler's 1995 film comedy, "Billy Madison." Whenever I have to listen to one, I start thinking about the movie’s principal, when he tells Sandler's character: "...what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard...Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it."

Wouldn't you just love to use that one sometime?

I can't think of a better response, short of having The Great Garloo suddenly appear to test the phone for endurance in his own special way.