If They’ll Mow My Yard, I’ll Welcome Our Robot Overlords Willingly

In Texas we’re enter­ing that time of year when the mer­cury reg­u­larly reaches the upper stratos­phere and the humid­ity is com­pletely unbear­able. Sum­mer (offi­cially) is right around the cor­ner and already we’ve hit the 100 degree mark in Dal­las sev­eral times. I’d hate to be a weath­er­man this time of year since your entire rou­tine on the nightly news would be, “Warm tonight, low 80’s, hot tomor­row, high near or above 100.” How many times does the poor guy (or girl) get stopped on the street of Any­town, TX. this time of year and asked if we’re going to get some rain or a cool front any­time soon? And how many times does he have to say, “This is Texas — wait a minute and the weather will change…except dur­ing summer.”

And now is the time of year that the yard is finally kick­ing into high gear. The grass is grow­ing, the flow­ers are bloom­ing, the ground cover is cov­er­ing but of course the prob­lem with all of this is that all of these things have upkeep and care involved. If I lived (as my brother does) in Las Vegas I would guess my front yard would be a nice plot of rocks or peb­bles or sand with some cac­tus and other sharp weather-hardy plants there. Not great for the kids but able to sur­vive even the worst heat wave or atomic test. But this isn’t Vegas, it’s Dal­las, where we do actu­ally get rain some­times dur­ing the sum­mer, and that means that the grass is still grow­ing, the flow­ers are still bloom­ing and the ground cover is still covering.

Yard work in that kind of weather is hard, espe­cially with­out a self-propelled lawn­mower, which I don’t have. Yard work for me has always been one of those things that I have to do — I’m the man, I must care for the yard even if I don’t care for the yard, which I don’t, because the only time that mow­ing the yard is not a risk to your well-being around these parts is in early spring. So about every week­end I’ll go out to the shed, pull out the weed eater and the lawn­mower and the blower and drag all of them back to the front yard and then run the weed eater and then the mower and then the blower and by that time I’m com­pletely burn­ing up and ready to lay down and die right there in the front yard. If only Hud­son from Aliens had been right.¹

But we’re liv­ing in the freak­ing 21st Cen­tury, a time of jet packs and fly­ing cars and nan­otech­nol­ogy and Ubuntu and cool stuff like that. Robots these days are still pretty prim­i­tive, at least on the con­sumer side. We don’t have cool robots yet like R2-D2 or C-3P0 or even HAL. You’ve got that stu­pid Robosapien and that weird talk­ing Fairy Dora and the even creepier look­ing Alive Elvis. I saw Alive Elvis at Macy’s before Christ­mas and he was going for $250. After Christ­mas? $50. Nobody wants a creepy singing/talking Elvis yet.

There are two robots that I could live with right now. The Roomba and the Robo­mow. Two robots that do things that no one wants to do — vac­uum and mow the yard. As you can tell, I could learn to love the Roomba, but man what I wouldn’t give for a Robo­mow. Being able to just sit up on the porch with the kids and the wife hav­ing break­fast on a warm sum­mer morn­ing while that won­der­ful lit­tle robot mows the yard for me. Sure, he doesn’t do weed eat­ing or blow­ing the excess grass away, but if I didn’t have to mow would I even care? Prob­a­bly not.

So come on Skynet, mate­ri­al­ize from the minds of 21st Cen­tury Man. Give me a Robo­mow and I would gladly let your Ter­mi­na­tors rule o’er me. At least in the sum­mer when you robots don’t care if it’s hot.

1. “Yeah man, but it’s a DRY heat! [↩]