We Feel Things Too You Know

“And he even washes the floor for me, AND I do believe the cat and dog” she gushed to her circle of friends, their pouting mouths ‘oohing’ and ‘aahhing’ about the latest edition to the family.

“And guess what? It’s got a name! She continued looking at her amazed friends faces, adding “I will give a bottle of red to the person who guesses its name”.

Meanwhile down on the floor the piece of equipment responsible for picking up all the dust and dog hair, the cat’s fur balls and the children’s hair clips and sweetie wrappers sat listening to a bunch of strangers (to him) guessing his name!

“You have a name for it? How sweet. Well….to me he looks like a Robbie”.

“No I would say Mikie”

“What about Humphrey or even Lenny?”

“No-one is close so I will tell you. It’s Clarence!” She told them all, a little smugly.

“Oh Clarence…how novel, but why did you choose that name?” someone asked

“Well I thought of Clarence the Cleaner. It’s got a ring to it don’t you think?”

“What a great name” someone suggested and then added “When can we come over and have a demonstration?”

Meanwhile down on the floor ‘it’ wasn’t happy!

“Clarence….you have got to be joking! I am a robot – we’re not called Clarence. I’m simply ‘he’, that’s all. They think I just swallow dirt and dust and that I can’t hear what they are saying, let alone think for myself – I’m not a dummy. Well I’ve got news for them. I have a brain – oh yes, they don’t know it but I’m just as smart as they are, if not more so” he said to himself, and then added “I DO NOT wash dogs and cats, there’s a mobile van for that!”

The robot observed that no-one in the house seemed to know anything about tidying up, or cleaning up after themselves. He had never been in a house quite like it…’I’m not looking forward to this’ he sighed.

The three boys were feral. Food was dropped everywhere, the dog stood in it and then traipsed it through the house and onto the plush pile. It made the robot angry “If they were my children I would be saying more than ‘Mummy has asked you to sit at the table three times now, please do as you are told!’ in a timid voice…I would let them know who was boss!” and just as he thought that, he watched one of them deliberately dropping sweet  wrappers – first though they rolled the paper into a tiny balls before they flicked it his way, looking at him as if to say ‘what’s it matter? YOU will clean up!”

Suddenly from the lounge room he heard “Quickly switch Clarence on” Mother called to the oldest of the children “the cat is trying to bring up a fur ball”

A noise that seemed to start in the pit of the cat’s stomach and wend its way through the darkness of its insides erupted from its mouth and with a’ bbbuuuurrr’ that sounded like a boy trying his best in a burping competition, spewed a soggy hairy mass of fur out of its tiny mouth and onto the floor.

“Ewww that is disgusting” someone yelled “I can’t look at that. Switch Clarence on, NOW!

“How do you switch it on?”

“It’s plugged in stupid” the boy told his younger brother “Just push that switch on the side.

The robot started up and made its way over to the mess, it’s straight back upright and solid, attached to the matching disk protruding out in front.

“I don’t mind the dust or paper or even a bit of fluff but this stuff is the worst” it lamented as the blob of ‘yuk’ was getting sucked into the little bin inside it. And I bet they forget to empty it – I won’t be able to live with myself, the smell will be awful”.

“Oh good job servant” one of the children called out, clapping and think it was really funny.

The household had gone to bed for the night but not before setting the robot on automatic…a 1am clean around the lounge, kitchen and hallway. “I hate the 1am clean, the robot said. I’m just nodding off and ‘buzz’ the timer goes off and I have to move”.

It wasn’t long before the internal bin was already full, and the job wasn’t even finished. “Not my fault they are so messy” and as he turned off he started to relax and began thinking of the last place he worked in.

Mrs. Jacobs had been the ideal owner of a robot. A small two bedroom unit, wooden floors, no carpet, and a Canadian Sphynx cat – no hair.

“It was heaven cleaning that place. In five years there wasn’t one regurgitated fur ball, no small bouncy balls that got stuck in my pipe and needed operating on and certainly never any peas or carrot or any vegetable for that matter, which had been mashed into a carpet. Why did she have to die and then leave me to her niece in her will?” the robot thought.

The next morning he was in trouble…”Why didn’t you finish the job you stupid robot?” one of the children yelled at him “Now I have to pick up all those bits of paper myself! Useless!”

Then the lady of the house joined in “Oh what! Clarence didn’t finish the job again? Oh for goodness sake! Well I don’t have enough time today to worry about that!” and she stormed off.

“I’ll empty it” said Dad “But if you children learnt to pick up some of your rubbish there wouldn’t be so much to vacuum up”

“Well we’re busy too you know” one of the little brats said giving Clarence a kick as he went past.

‘What horrible children’ the robot thought to himself ‘If I was human I’d come down on those little horrors like a ton of bricks’…

“Right now you lot – get in the car for school” Dad told them, “I’ll put Clarence on for when we’re all away. Are you going straight out?” asked his wife as she ran through the kitchen

“Yes I am but look at my shoes” she wailed pointing to her brown suede boots which were covered in ash. “How I’ll get that all out I’ll never know! Why do so many of my friends still smoke and then leave full ashtrays in places I don’t know about!” she said with disgust rubbing furiously with a cloth and then shaking it out over the floor.

‘Why didn’t you do that outside? Now look at all of this cigarette ash!” Clarence said to himself “If I don’t get some sort of disease before my life time guarantee is up I’ll be very surprised, dust mites are bad enough but cigarette ash is the real killer”.

The main bedroom belong to Mr and Mrs Chesson was always very neat – they had a bit of respect for their robot vacuum!. Clarence quickly glided over the carpet with no real mishaps – in fact he found it quite soothing – a bit like doing the waltz without a partner. He looked back as he cleverly made his way through the doorway doing an extra twirl as he went through, but then he reached the bedroom of the oldest boy.

‘This bedroom is a disgrace! He obviously doesn’t think he has to use his wardrobe or cupboard’ thought Clarence trying to avoid running into the mounds of clothes on the floor, while at the same time keeping away from the skirting boards and walls – he didn’t want to get into any more trouble! ‘How am I supposed to clean the carpet? I’ll go around this way’ he decided to himself, but as he manoeuvred his way carefully in between some stinky old socks and a pile of comics he felt something underneath him, a lump!

‘Aaahhh’. I can’t move. I’ll put it in reverse and try to move over towards the side at the same time’. Whatever he had run over was keeping him on the one spot. His engine started to make a loud ‘whirring’ sound – he slowly began to move to the right, then the left, backwards, forwards, backwards again! I did seem to be getting a bit easier with each change of direction and he couldn’t feel the lump anymore. The noise was getting quieter too. ‘Oh that’s better now’ he thought as he began to travel around quite freely

‘I couldn’t vacuum much of the carpet but I’ve done what I could” he thought as he squeezed himself out through the door - in-between a football one side of the door frame and a broken clock radio the other.

If Clarence had of looked behind himself he would have seen the bubble gum that had been dragged, by the machine, all over the carpet!

But instead he went from one bedroom to the next, doing the best he could, while sucking up pieces of Lego, a tiny plastic gun, three coins and four marbles.

“Time for a rest before they all get home” said Clarence to himself as the engine came to a stop and the peace and quiet enveloped him. He drifted off thinking of old Mrs Jacobs once again and how good she was to him, wiping him with a cloth each day, having his motor checked annually and putting new wheels on him every six months so he glided effortlessly over the cedar floorboards.

Clarence woke up suddenly to the sound he heard every day at this time ‘fighting and arguing’.

“I’ve thought a lot about this” C

larence told himself listening to the squabbling. “And I have decided that I need a change, somewhere peaceful, less hectic, not so much work and not so many people in the house. I think I shall be leaving here in the not too distant future. I’ll have a look around and see what’s good for me! And it definitely isn’t this kind of thing…..here we go again!”

“That was your fault and not mine” one of the boys shouted to the other while throwing his heavy school bag on the floor, just missing Clarence by centimetres and racing into the kitchen to see what there was to eat.

“Look what you’ve done you idiot” came a voice from the kitchen “that was your fault – mum will kill you, there’s orange juice everywhere. Quick put the robot on and he can suck it up”.

He didn’t feel like orange juice at this time of day and wanted to tell them, but instead he was pulled from his comfortable spot and dragged over towards the fridge, plugged in and switched on. It tasted awful - too cold and a little ‘pickled’ but he dutifully sicked it up, collecting it in the little bin.

“Shall we pretend we dropped the fish pie too? I don’t want that for dinner tonight. I hate fish pie – it makes me gag” the two brothers said sneakily, hatching up a plan that was good for them but for Clarence….fish pie on top of orange juice???

One of them picked up the pie dish and let it go from high above his head. The glass smashed on the tiles on the kitchen floor, a huge noise that resounded all through the house, bringing the third brother into the kitchen to witness the mayhem.

There were lumps of fish, vegetable and puff pastry scattered all over the floor, splattered on some of the cupboard doors and even a few specs of ‘liquid’ on the ceiling!

“Oh what have you done? I don’t want to be here when Mum gets home. You have to clean it up Freddie”

“I’m not going near that stuff, you clean it up” he yelled at his brother, trying to side step the lumps of food that lay all over the kitchen.

“Put Clarence on” the oldest boy ordered “He can clean it up. That’s his job, not ours”

He started to feel sick. The orange juice was already fermenting inside of him, rising to the top of the collection box before subsiding, up and down, up and down. ‘EEERR’ I don’t feel too good’ he thought.

“Freddie put him on top of most of the fish pie and switch it on” Jack ordered his younger brother, and he did.

Clarence could feel the mess through his underside – he felt as if his insides might be settling down but  when the feeling of what was underneath the machine registered, they started gurgling  again like a volcano ready to erupt!

The switch went on and Clarence began to move, back and forwards, back and forwards, fish pie getting sucked up the bottom of the machine and into the container with the swirling acidy juice. Bits of broccoli too large to go up straight away were run over a few times, until the soft lumps could slide easily up. Carrot, onion, fish, pastry, up it all went into one mess.

‘I’m not well’ thought Clarence ‘I need to get out of the kitchen and head towards the bathroom’. He charged off through the lounge and the soft carpet heading for the soothing cold tiles of the bathroom.

But Clarence didn’t make it.

Out of different holes, slits and openings that he didn’t even know he had, erupted a fishy orange sludge. Like the first gush of a newly discovered oil well, it spat high up towards the ceiling, hitting it and falling back down in droplets onto the lovely soft bathroom rug below.

The boys came running in after hearing the commotion. “Yuk that is disgusting!” said Freddie “and there’s the piece of lego I’ve been looking for…inside that bit of greenstuff…

‘Just all go away’ thought Clarence feeling another surge coming on – he didn’t even care when one of the boys kicked him out of the way and told him “You will be in the rubbish bin tonight”.

And Clarence did end up in the rubbish bin after the lady of the house arrived home to the mess! Before she had walked completely through the hall she could smell something ‘fishy’…”What is that dreadful smell? Boys come here!”

They took her into the bathroom where Clarence sat, still. One wall in the bathroom had black marks up it as if something had exploded against it and mixed in with the odour of trout and vegetable and fermented orange juice was the acrid smell of a burnt out motor.

“Oh, oh, oh’” was all she could say, and then pulling herself together added “Someone put that, useless robot in the rubbish bin!”

Clarence wasn’t at the rubbish tip for very long before he was spotted by an electronics geek wandering about in wellington boots and gloves, looking for anything he could fix up! “Wow, a robot vacuum” he exclaimed in delight “Needs a really good clean first, but I’ll take it apart, work on it and see what I can do”.

Six weeks later, Clarence, or rather ‘the robot’ was working like new.

He loved his new home. A one bedroom apartment, no carpet, no pets, no children and apart from the sound of Steve tinkering with anything electrical he could find, not much noise.

What a life.