Robot Boy
Back in grade school I met a robot. Or at least I thought I did.
Every class has someone who doesn’t quite fit in. As a minister’s son, I often found myself talking to my mother about kids who sat alone at school. She would inevitably say, “You should invite him over.” So began a strange, short-lived friendship with a boy whose name I no longer remember. For the sake of this story, I’ll call him Tommy.
At school a few days later, I asked Tommy if he wanted to jump on a couple of empty playground swings. He sheepishly said yes, and I took over the conversation while intermittently prompting semis passing by Hough Street School to honk their horns. Tommy’s face brightened with the attention.
My usual first grade after-school routine was to follow the mailman around the block before heading home. This day was going to be different. Tommy said he wanted to show me a project he was working on, and since he lived a street over, I was game. As we meandered toward his house, he told me he only had one friend.
There are moments in our lives one knows that something extraordinary is on the verge of happening. Looking at Tommy’s house made me realize this was one of those moments. It was an enormous, dilapidated structure, with so much white paint flaking off its distressed wood frame it was molting.
Tommy led me around back and pulled a huge ring of cylinder, tubular, and skeleton keys from the pocket of his faded jeans. He fumbled through them, selected one, and opened a rusty padlock on a large door leading into the basement. I peered in. The damp air exuded a Silence of the Lambs kind of vibe, and Tommy excitedly motioned me inside.
Basements in old houses have their own odors. I remember ours smelled faintly of Fab laundry detergent, my dad’s books, and our cat’s litter box. This one was different: petroleum, metal, and something else I couldn’t place. Sweet, almost confectionery, like cider or canned preserves.
I followed Tommy into a massive workroom. Every corner disappeared into shadow. Dust specks glimmered in small rays of sunlight poking through window slats. Coffee cans overflowed with screws. Rusty gears lay scattered across the workbench beside half-disassembled radios and tangled wires. Nothing looked finished, but everything looked like it might become something else.
“Do you like it?” Tommy asked. “I built him myself.”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, not quite understanding what I was giving my stamp of approval to.
Then Tommy turned and, in a confident tone, said, “Meep. Meep.”
He looked at me. “Say hello.”
I gazed into the empty space before me.
“Hello.”
Almost incredulously, Tommy exclaimed, “No, he’s not over here. He’s there!”
This began a strange game of cellar hide-and-seek with a robot Tommy could see but whose location I could never quite determine. Every so often, I would hear the “meep meep” call and move from one dark, cobweb-filled room to another, hoping to catch a glimpse of the robot Tommy had built.
After fifteen minutes, I found my way back to the main workroom.
“I put him to sleep in the corner,” Tommy said.
His complete confidence that the robot was standing right there amazed me. He was proud. I was confused.
I’ve been thinking about Tommy lately. I don’t know what happened to him – we moved to Evanston a few weeks later. Maybe he became an engineer or an artist. Maybe life eventually convinced him to stop looking for robots in empty rooms.
Somewhere along the way, many of us stop giving ourselves permission to imagine. What if imagination isn’t something we’re born with and lose? What if it’s something we simply stop practicing?
As I picture myself standing once again in Tommy’s basement, I’m filled with that same strange mix of confusion and wonder.
I can almost hear him calling out to his friend.
Meep. Meep.
That’s enough for me to believe.
About Greenland Sharks
Greenland Sharks is a Chicago men's group who value friendship, experiences, and the long swim. Just a crew that shows up. No speeches. No name tags. No nonsense.
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