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.