Hammacher Schlemmer

Hammacher Schlemmer.  What a mouthful.

When I was a kid I thought I would hear my mother say, “I went to HAMmacherSchlemmacheh” and I thought it was Yiddish.  I thought she was saying she went off the grid, as in had a knipshun fit.  If you went to “HAMmacherSchlemmmacheh” it was like you went berzerk, but not so berzerk that you couldn’t talk about it later on the phone.

Hammacher Schlemmer.

I kept trying to liken it to other Yiddish phrases and parse its etymology.  I couldn’t figure it out.  I accepted it as a one-off word without common roots that was just something you said in one breath and it meant bizarro-world.

Then one day, when I was about 16 years old, I was walking along 57th Street and saw a store with a Hammacher Schlemmer banner.  It didn’t say “HAMmacherSchlemmmacheh” but it was too close for coincidence.  I didn’t get two steps beyond the second set of doors when I was scared by my childhood images of going insane in town of HAMmacherSchlemmmacheh.

After a few years, I realized it was an emporium of cool, yet useless, gadgetry.  Before our personal austerity plan was enacted in 2007, I spent a fair amount of time and money at this emporium.  I felt bad — these were probably two anti-Semitic Germans whose names will forever sound Yiddish.  That thought made me smile.  Also that I, a second generation American, was a vociferous consumer of their useless over-the-top goods.  Wedding gifts, novelties — the Two-Germans-Who-Sound-Like-Yiddish-Purgatory was my store of choice.

The fact that I haven’t shopped there in 4 years doesn’t stop the emails about the new products.  Today’s made me laugh:  The Mold and Germ Destroying Air Purifier and the Hands-Free Hair Rejuvenator helmet.  http://hammacher.whatcounts.com/dm?id=C89617FFA81C5A49230781CDAA8D77348B67C265ED571C6B

The HANDS-FREE HAIR REJUVENATOR?  It looks like it could also double as a bike helmet.  Now, there’s value.

Sometimes, first impressions ARE right.