Roombaphobia
That thing scares the pants off me!
SFBaby hates the noise from our regular vacuum cleaner, which means that SFDad can’t vacuum when the baby is awake. He also can’t vacuum when she is sleeping, since the vacuum would wake her up. The only real alternative is to vacuum when she is not around, which is kind of hard to do during the workweek since SFDad has no help while SFMom is at work.
Last month, during the teleconferenced proceedings for The First Birthday, the grandparents-from-the-east noticed SFDad scurrying around and trying to pick crumbs off the floor from SFBaby’s birthday “cake.” It also happens that the grandparents needed birthday and Christmas presents for both SFMom and SFDad, so this presented an opportunity. Enter the Roomba vacuum-cleaning robot. It’s admittedly a nice piece of excess, but it’s handy.
We’ve only had occasion to turn it on twice so far, but it’s doing a decent job of keeping our piles of dirt and dustbunnies in check between our more thorough cleanings. Now that SFBaby is eating finger foods and playing in the sand pit at the playground, let’s just say that our house is no longer a stranger to piles of dirt.
The only catch is that SFBaby is scared of the Roomba—really scared!
We’ve tried everything: SFMom first tried to anthropomorphize the Roomba (as she is wont to do) by petting it and calling it nice names while SFBaby was watching, but that didn’t help at all.
We tried letting SFBaby see that the robot could cruise up to her and that it wouldn’t hurt her, but we didn’t get anywhere with that either.
SFBaby is learning words quickly now, and we realized that she was getting scared when we even mentioned the name of the device. (We now have to talk about the R-O-O-M-B-A if SFBaby is in the room.)
For the first day or two, SFBaby would even run into the living room, point at the (inactive) Roomba and whimper a little. This has mostly worn off, but she still doesn’t like to be around (or even in the house) when it’s turned on. The good news is that it can be programmed to run when we are out of the house, so we finally have a working system!
Now, if only we could convince the Roomba to do our laundry for us.
Tags: anthropomorphism, cleaning, fear, roomba, vacuum
It’s shocking to me that she is already old enough to walk. Damn, that happened quickly!
Congratulations! You actually DO have a pet cat – just one who talks with a lot less hair! I wonder if a cheesy toy vacuum cleaner would help? We have one we can ship to you….
This is a mild form of gadget aversion. Treat it before it is too late (or leave it untreated and you might save some bills, like the one for SFbaby’s first ipod): Chocolate chip cookies on the vacuum cleaner. Sweets dropped by the robot. The possibilities are endless. Hm, dentist bills.