‘I presume,’ she said, ‘you are anti-war toy?’ : Ho, Ho, Hum

Smart campaigners for social causes know that the holiday season is a perfect time to ask for money or support. America goes dewy-eyed when the silver bells tinkle, and the very idea of a family without a ho-ho-ho to its wretched name is enough to send a tear down a Teamster’s cheek.

So the air is filled with greenbacks as thick as autumn leaves when a soprano call to give! rises in counterpoint to the basso profundo spend!

We are not just talking Toys for Tots here, pal.

We are talking full-scale attacks on poverty, hunger, crime, disease, atheism, war, infertility, loneliness, homelessness, red meat, child abuse, animal neglect, cigarette smoking, cocaine snorting, sodium ingestion, air pollution, drunk driving and sexual perversion.

We are talking an end to sin and sadness.

I mention this only because I have been overwhelmed lately by those seeking my donation or my signature in this year’s battle against a catalogue of social inequities.

The dominance of individual campaigns varies from Christmas to Christmas, but their altruistic intentions cannot be denied.

Hunger was No. 1 last year and homelessness the year before, each gathering a small army of celebrities willing, at whatever risk, to take the point in a relentless war against starving or freezing to death in a Skid Row doorway.

Admittedly, it is not a very big risk. I have never once, for instance, heard anyone rise in favor of hunger or homelessness, though I am certain now that someone will.

War toys have already been nominated as the social evil of 1985 in the recycled-cause category. A war toys burial was held recently and a drive is under way in Los Angeles to boycott merchants who sell Rambo dolls, tiny F-16 fighter planes and darling plastic Uzis .

I learned of it in front of Thrifty the other day when I was accosted by a skinny old lady with an electric tan and close-cropped white hair.

She blocked my path from the store and said: “If you believe in peace, why let your kids play at war?”

She was too old to be a hooker and too clean to be a bum, so I hesitated momentarily. That created the opportunity for her to shove a petition at me and a packet of material that included tracts against war toys.

I am normally a very accommodating person who will sign almost anything, but I was on my way to have my hair cut and Bobby, the man who cuts my hair, doesn’t like it when I’m late.

“I see we had a little problem arriving on time, did we?” he always says, glancing at the clock and arching one eyebrow.

He cuts hair at a salon called Jamie & Co. in Woodland Hills, which is a far cry from One-Eyed Harry’s shop in East Oakland. One-Eyed Harry used to spray saliva when he talked and since he talked most of the time, the air around him was always dampened by a fine mist.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the old lady, “I don’t have time.”

“No time for peace?” she demanded.

I hate it when they do that. I grabbed the petition and signed it. She recognized my name.

“Well, well,” she said, in the manner of a coyote who had just rolled a rabbit on his back, “I know you’ll be interested in this.”

Like hell.

She dug out a tract. “Let me read to you.”

“Lady,” I said, “I am really in a hurry.”

“A family emergency?”

I was thinking about having Bobby remove the gray from my eyebrows. I don’t mind salt and pepper hair or a salt and pepper mustache, but salt and pepper eyebrows are too much. Now he won’t have time.

“If we were prompt,” he would say, “any-thing would be poss-ible.” Bobby often talks in hyphens.

I sighed. “Paraphrase it,” I said to the old lady.

She read from a study by the University of Utah. War toys were introduced to 10 previously sunny-natured 5-year-olds.

“Soon,” the skinny old lady read, “they were engaged in insults, critical comments, bossiness, threats to hurt, hits, kicks, bites, pushes, grabs and teases.”

“That’s terrible,” I said. “They don’t usually get that way until their teens.”

Damn me for saying that. She bristled.

“What,” she said in a tone as cold as a banker’s heart, “do you mean by that?”

I explained it was only a joke, that it was my job to josh and snipe and clap my hands.

“I presume,” she said, “you are anti-war toy?”

I have been in a war. I have studied war. I have theories on war. But I sure as hell was not going to discuss them with a pushy old lady on a windy corner of the San Fernando Valley when Bobby was waiting to cut my hair.

“Madam,” I said, “I am so anti-war toy that I am going to saunter down the boulevard and attack the first toy maker I meet.”

“Well,” she said, pleased, “don’t let me keep you.”

I crossed the street to Jamie & Co. “My, my,” Bobby said, glancing at the clock, “I see we are our old un-punct-ual selves.”

I didn’t ask him about darkening my eyebrows.