The Robot Talk

           Sometimes my boys ask me questions that I just don’t know the answers to. And if I do know the answers, how am I supposed to explain those answers to such innocent, young kids? The other day, my five-year-old son, Jackson, asked me this: “Um, Dad, where are robots?” That’s one of those questions that, as parents, we all expect to someday be asked, yet dread the day that it is asked. I didn’t expect to be asked so soon. I thought it would be another five or ten years before I had to have the Robot Talk with my sons. I say “sons” because Ethan had wandered in from the other room. He’d heard Jackson’s question and wanted to hear what I had to say.

“Well, boys,” I said, looking at my feet, feeling awkward and definitely at a loss for words. “You know…well…robots are everywhere….”

“Where?” Jackson asked.

“They’re in factories….”

“What are factories?” he asked.

“Factories are where things are made.”

“Oh, you mean like bananas and video games?”

“No, not bananas.”

“I want a boonana!” Ethan said.

“We don’t have any bananas,” I said

“Oh!” Ethan said, stomping his foot in displeasure. “I wanted a boonana!”

“Ethan!” Jackson said. “We don’t have any!”

“Dad!” Ethan yelled. “Jackson’s mean at me!”

“Jackson’s not mean at you,” I assured.

“Yeah, Ethan,” Jackson said, “We’re just talking about robots and factories and, you know, more robots.”

“But I really love boonanas,” Ethan said, dejectedly.

“I know you do,” I said. “I’ll get some at the store tomorrow.”

“How did the robots get in the factories?” Jackson asked.

“Maybe they were built there,” I said.

“Oh, they didn’t walk there?”

“No. They were built there or maybe they were brought there.”

“Are they nice?”

“They’re not mean or nice,” I said. “They’re just machines.”

“Oh, you mean, if we’re nice to them, they’ll be nice to us, but if we’re mean to them, they’ll be mean to us?”

“No. They just build things.”

“Why?”

“It makes life easier, I guess.”

Naturally, Jackson and Ethan wanted to know more about car-building robots, so I decided to look for online videos of robots assembling cars. I showed them the first video I found. Jackson seemed interested in the video and Ethan looked troubled. Jackson asked how the robots could see, since they didn’t have eyes. Before I could answer, he asked, “Dad, are those robots gonna try to astroy us?” [Astroy = Destroy in Jackson-speak.]

            I assured him that they would not try to destroy us. Then a lightbulb went off in his head. “Oh, cuz we’d shoot them with guns or something?”

I thought about telling him that these robots will never come after us. But then I thought about the Terminator movies, as well as I, Robot, Transformers, and any number of other evil-robot movies. What if robots did come after us someday? As a parent, I strongly believe that you have to prepare your children for the future, so I answered, “Yes, son, we’ll shoot them with guns. Or something.”

            “And then,” Ethan chimed in, “we’ll throw them in hot lava.”

We all agreed that was a good idea, because throwing robots in hot lava would be so cool.