Thank You Very Much, Mr. Roboto

 We got a Roomba vacuuming robot this Christmas. Apparently, one has to name the automated crumb catcher, in order for it to function properly, why... I don’t fully understand, but Sue was soliciting my advice on what to name the little rascal so I chimed in.

My first choice was ‘Robut’  like the name for the B-9 Robot on ‘Lost In Space.’  I liked it when Will Robinson would innocently call Dr. Smith’s favorite Cantankerous Cold-hearted Clump simply ‘Robut.’ Nope. Too boring. No one would get it.

How about ‘Rosie,’ like the cleaning maid robot on ‘The Jetsons’? To which Sue replied, “Why does it even need to have a woman’s name? You’re just feeding into the stereotype that only women do that sort of work.”

I knew right then that offering up the name of another television housekeeper/maid wasn’t a good idea, so I quietly kept ‘Catalina’ from ‘My Name Is Earl’ to myself.   I did make the mistake of saying, “Oh... you’re not one of them, are you?” And then she said some other words followed by, “Why can’t we give it a man’s name?” 

Good point, but the only men’s names that came to mind were Mr. French and Mr. Belvedere and I had never seen a single episode of ‘Mr. Belvedere’ so that one didn’t really resonate with me. 

“Why can’t we name it ‘Mr. Clean’? she says.

Fair enough. He’s a good cleaner, but far less single-mindedly focused and robotic than our new mechanized Hazel.  I sort of conceded with, “Yeah, that’s a good one,” without fully letting go of the possibility of giving it a prettier name. 

She then circled back to “Why does it have to have a girl’s name?” 

This next part right here is why I need to learn to be quiet and stop being obsessed with being the funniest guy in the room, which I usually am anyway... so I’ve been told, but I digress. 

So I say, “Well, if it doesn’t have a girl’s name it is not going to be able to make us a sammich.”  

At the very moment those words left my mouth, I could actually hear the laugh track echoing in my head, but nothing of the sort was coming out of Sue. 

Weird.

So far, Mr. Clean has memorized the layout our entire first floor and is doing a bang up job.