A big panic moment rattled our home last night.
We could not find our Roomba.
For those of us over 50, a Roomba is an annoying little circular thing that magically performs four things simultaneously:
1. It zooms around vacuuming the floor in the middle of the night…Ok, zooming is a bit of a stretch. It is more like a drunk cleaning person who cleans the floors by stumbling around until it knocks its head on a wall, then it turns around and walks into another wall. Then it goes back to its “home” and pukes up all the dirt into a bin, unless it falls asleep along the way, which ours does quite often.
2. It makes my wife happy. Sexist view or not, she is the one more obsessed with the little pieces of dirt, popcorn, paper, and yes, toenail clippings that find their way to our floor. When I was a kid, I cleaned out manure pits and chicken stalls, so a few toenails are not the impending disaster that my wife, Wendy, treats them as.
3. It annoys the dog, scares the dog, excites the dog. In short, it drives my dog mad. At 11 p.m. on its scheduled night, it pops on and immediately my dog worries that it will either kill her on the spot or eat her food. She is extremely nervous until it finds its way back to its home (see item 1).
4. It keeps me from getting yelled at. As any experienced husband knows, women need connection and the way they connect is by making up rules that their husbands have to adhere to on the spot. “Would you do me a big favor?” is Wendy’s method of saying, “here comes something stupid I want you to do because I love you and I want to feel connected.” Each wife has her own “here it comes” phrase.
Here is why I was confused. About 20 years ago, our daughter Julie got lost in Cumberland State Park in Tennessee, which is a huge park full of confusing trails. It is a long story, but basically I was in charge of Maddie (our youngest) while Wendy, my son Glen and Julie were going to walk a steep path and go swimming in a waterfall (which the sign said they were not supposed to do).
From about 500 feet away, I noticed that Julie was not with them and asked where Julie was (actually screamed because of the distance and the waterfall). Wendy looked around and yelled “Don’t worry, we will find her,” and went back to swimming. It all ended well thanks to a couple of empathetic college kids who sat with one very scared Julie in the middle of a state park path.
So, you would think that Wendy would be calm about losing the Roomba.
Nope. As soon as she discovered that her little worker friend/robot was gone, it was an all hands on deck search for the little guy.
I have a love/hate relationship with Mr. Roomba, to be honest. While I like the fact he keeps me from getting yelled at, the little guy has an attitude. He keeps bumping into things, makes odd noises, and gets caught on shoes, etc. One time he got caught on a slightly upturned rug and the next morning we found him out of power, like a drunk who just passed out on a street corner. When we get him back home, he beeps happily like he is raring to go again. He is very two-faced.
After a long search and fruitless Google search on “How to find your lost Roomba,” we found him. I think he had finally had enough and found a nice little place to nap under our TV stand. I’m thinking he was happily Googling his other buddies in other homes while we searched, calling us idiots and also recording for all the world to see his exact hiding location. The fact that Russian hackers now know we have a secret hiding place under our TV stand is a bit unsettling.
I can’t throw him out any more than I can get rid of our dog. Mr. Roomba now owns his piece of the house. In fact, I think my wife would pause a moment if I said “It is either me or Mr. Roomba.”
However, I am considering getting a second Roomba, calling it Mrs. Roomba, and giving the guy a taste of his own medicine.