The poor guys – and you know who you are – used to have to suffer the dizzying ordeal of last-minute Christmas shopping all alone.

Generations of these men would allow the signs of the approaching gift-giving season to pass unnoticed until they were forced to act, which usually was a week or less before Dec. 25. They’d hear all the TV ads hawking Christmas music even before Halloween, and still the bells didn’t go off. The shopping-savvy women in their families might start bringing home warm-up gifts long before Thanksgiving, but still the men paid no attention.

When asked, “Have you started your Christmas shopping yet?” the men might flinch, as if they had just been asked to explain the mysteries of women’s dress sizes.

For these men, the Lost Men of Christmas, as a friend once termed them, it was always too early to consider the distasteful matter of making the annual pilgrimage to the mall to buy gifts for the women in their lives. When they did finally venture out, they’d shuffle wearily through the harried masses, cups of coffee in hand and looks of desperation on their faces. Armed with credit cards, scribbled gift lists, and pure determination, they’d enter the unfamiliar terrain valiantly at first.

Yet after an hour or two, and a couple of well-deserved coffee breaks, the men would be found wandering the aisles like zombies with nothing more to show for their labors than a couple of sweaty little bags containing earrings or Isotoner gloves. Eventually, panic would set in. The myriad colors on the clothing racks would all blur into one headache-inducing beige. Their feet swollen, their limited shopping stamina exhausted, the Lost Men would usually give up and go home, knowing there was always tomorrow, even if tomorrow happened to be Christmas Eve.

From what I witnessed at the mall recently, however, I think the Lost Men could soon become an endangered species. More and more of them, it seems, are discovering the wonders of the cell phone while shopping. It’s the umbilical that connects them to all that is familiar and dear and far better versed in the Byzantine whims of fashion and sizing.

The man I saw at the handbags display, for instance, had all the earmarks of a traditional Lost Man: the ball cap set on the back of the head, the heavy work boots, the shiny jacket signifying membership in a northern Maine snowmobile club. He roamed the leathery inventory for a while, wholly bewildered in the way of Lost Men everywhere, and then whipped out a cell phone for help.

“Hi, it’s Dad,” he said to his daughter and helpful confidante. “I need you to help me pick out a bag for Mom.”

The shopping teleconference went on for a few minutes, as the man described the selections before him in as much detail as a person clearly out of his element could muster.

“OK, you’d know better than me,” he said after a while, clutching his daughter’s tasteful choice. “That’s one I’ll get.”

The nifty technology worked for another man who appeared to be foundering in a vast sea of women’s sweaters. In the past, all those colors and patterns and styles would have caused his eyes to glaze over and his brain to shut down.

Before reaching that meltdown point, however, he got on his cell phone, greeted his at-home fashion consultant, and then proceeded to roam the aisles with the confidence of a man who has been spared all of the troubling indecisiveness and baffling guesswork that had ruined all the Christmas shopping expeditions in his past.

With a handy cell phone in his coat pocket, and a willing adviser awaiting his call of distress, the Lost Man is not so lost anymore.

“Yeah, it’s me again. I made it to the plus sizes, like you told me, and now I’m heading over to the blouses. OK, so remind me again about the colors I’m supposed to avoid at all costs.”

The women in their lives are the real beneficiaries of this new technology, of course. In Christmases past, they’ve been forced to gush sweetly each time they opened gifts from their husbands and found yet another bathrobe, toaster oven, iron, Crock-Pot or pair of skidless slippers.

If this phone trend catches on, however, the women might look forward to a Christmas morning when they can open gifts from spouses and say with genuine admiration and surprise, “It’s absolutely perfect! How did you know?”

The Lost Men don’t get to hear that very often.