#RobotWars
You know you’ve had a bad weekend when your cat is sulking and trying to eat your shoe at the same time. My pet hates me. My phone hates me. My mum’s boyfriend hates me.
Things are looking bad right now. But before YOU start hating on me, too, let me try to explain what really happened this afternoon.
Firstly, I am NOT a murderer. I did not try to kill a machine. It was just a simple misunderstanding between a very angry feline, a desk, and my foot. But it all just got completely out of hand, and Mr. Neat Freak and his zombie pack of dusters are exploiting the situation.
And I don’t want to blame anyone for the accident, but it WAS Mum’s fault. She wanted me to spend the afternoon doing my homework, so she turned the Wi-Fi off. I KNOW. I was forced to find a desperate way to get service so that I could send a message to Lauren. It was an important message that would cheer the gorgeous Laurenmeister up. She’s a best friend who is very fed up and in need of some love.
And it should be a simple thing to message your friends. It’s a human right but not in this house. This is a mobile dead zone.… Not this area. Just my house.
To try to get my message to send, I had to hang out of the window with my arm waving in the air. That didn’t work. Our neighbor thought I wanted to speak to her. There is no problem, Mrs. Milner. I am just living with two unreasonable, controlling dictators. Then I tried to use the shower in the bathroom as a massive antenna thing. This also failed. The shower is for washing. The shower knew it was not a cell tower and would not play along.
So instead I used my cat, Dave, as a mobile hot spot. I learned some valuable lessons here. A phone will not balance on a cat’s back, and the cat will then try to eat the phone in anger. Then it will try to eat the contents of your wardrobe.
Once Dave had deserted me for my socks, I had no choice but to stand on top of my desk, flex my leg, point my toes, and hold my phone up in the air as high as I could. Getting a decent signal to text your best friend should NOT involve ballet, but it was worth trying for Lauren. I was pirouetting by my laptop when Dave decided that she wanted to get involved. There was a huge feline leap with full claw extension onto my knee. I lost my balance and fell off the desk. My heel planted itself firmly on my mum’s boyfriend’s best friend.
His robot vacuum cleaner. It had come into my bedroom to feed on dust.
As I landed on the machine, it beeped in distress. It stopped eating dirt and switched to a random path of confusion. Dave then attempted to kill the robot vacuum cleaner by jumping on top of it. It did sort of look like an out-of-control pigeon.
At that moment, the neat-freak boyfriend rushes into my bedroom and sees MY cat surfing on top of HIS robot vacuum cleaner. The Neat Freak yells at Dave, then yells at me that I’ve had it in for him and his “superior cleaning methods” for ages!
He then starts nursing his best vacuum cleaner friend like it’s a massive, soppy Labrador, reassuring it that all will be okay. He takes it downstairs, muttering about its delicate microbrush technology, and I haven’t seen him since.
So Dave and I are now sitting in my bedroom. I still haven’t managed to text Lauren, and I think I am in big trouble. This doesn’t seem fair, because I’ve tried to get along with this man. He’s my mum’s boyfriend and a neat freak, but I’ve tried. That’s me, I suppose. I try to get along with everyone, because things are just easier that way, aren’t they? But you cannot live with a man who puts his relationship with a cleaning device before his relationship with living things.
He’s even given the robot vacuum cleaner a name: McWhirter.
And McWhirter follows me everywhere. He’s like my rotating, sucking-everything-up shadow. When I eat my toast at breakfast, you hear the Neat Freak saying, “There, boy! Get Millie’s crumbs!” When I eat dinner, he’s at his master’s side. Sitting. Waiting. Staring. I know he’s just a machine, but his ON/OFF switch looks like eyes. Glowing, red eyes full of tidiness, hungry for a treat of some of my mess. McWhirter the cleaning robot dog has become my bossy, buzzing stepbrother. He is terrorizing me with his automatic settings and full-view sensor.
He? I’m calling McWhirter he now! I can’t stay here. I’ll go mad. I’ll start talking to the dishwasher. Neat Freak does that, too. He hasn’t given it a name yet, but it’s only a matter of time. He congratulates it when it’s finished a cycle.
It’s not normal, is it?
All this nonstop trauma over stupid stuff, like fluffy balls on wood floors, makes me think …
It makes me think that I need to go live with my dad.
How much twonk can one girl take?! Gary IS a twonk and he gives twonk. Twonks like him do the sort of idiot stuff that HURTS lives. We are not talking spoon—meaning the silliness that usually makes you like a person more (LAUREN!). We are talking full-on, drilling-in-your-head, lemon-in-your-eyes-on-a-day-to-day-basis TWONK. It’s the WHOLE twonk attitude. They just want to make your life tougher—even when it’s tough already. If you’re climbing a mountain, they’ll come along and say you need a concrete backpack. SERIOUSLY, twonks are WARPED!
I know that sounds a bit “Drama Queen,” but I don’t seem to belong here anymore. Maybe, if I just move out for a while, Mum might miss me and realize that I’m actually nice to have around. And one great thing about having parents who don’t live together is that I actually have somewhere else I could go.
It’s telling Mum that’s going to be SO hard.
My mum isn’t evil, but she’s strict and tough beyond the belief of any normal human being or even any parent. Living with her is a bit like being in the army without having to wear camouflage trousers or getting the opportunity to squash people you don’t like with a tank.
And yes, when I say that, I am thinking of rolling over her boyfriend. And McWhirter.
When it was just Mum and me, we fit together more. I could cope with her rules. Obviously, her turning off the Wi-Fi at eight o’clock EVERY night apart from Saturday wasn’t great, but we were at least partners in crime—or grime, as the Neat Freak called it when he first arrived with his stupid Lycra shorts and power mop. No, Mum didn’t clean much and there was an inch of furry-based mess on top of the widescreen—but who cares?
She works at the hospital. She’s not a surgeon or anything, but she has to order all the swabs and bandages. So she’s basically responsible for stopping people from bleeding to death on a national scale. She saves lives! She doesn’t need to DUST. And she doesn’t want me cleaning too much, either. She doesn’t want me to become tied to an oven, baking my signature-style Black Forest gâteau for some man. She would much rather I come with her to her boxercise class or do my homework or BOTH. At the same time. Mum does multi-tasking like no other woman dares.
I haven’t got a signature-style cake, by the way—mainly because Mum and I aren’t big on baking. Mum says that if you can get a perfectly decent apple pie from the supermarket, then why bother spending two hours making one? Just watch people do it on TV. I agree. We agree on most things. Or we did until Gary turned up and hoovered all our love away.
Gary. Gary “Neat Freak” Woolton.
Do you know that only twenty-three babies in the WHOLE of this country have been called Gary in the past two years?! This is because Garys CAUSE TROUBLE. And they polish everything at the same time.
Every Friday, Mum and I used to slum it together on the sofa in our pajamas and watch television till one in the morning. Now Friday night for me is YouTube on my own, and Friday night for her is date night with a man who smells like Pine-Sol. I can’t even watch Netflix, because they’re always too busy watching something about the Tudors. He’s ruined everything.
And since I’ve been back at school, Mum’s insisting that I start following a strict study plan. My final exams aren’t until JUNE. And don’t even get me started on Gary’s cleaning schedule. The oven does not need daily cleaning. Before he came along, we hardly used it.
I have to get out of here. Especially now that Gary thinks I’m a robot vacuum cleaner murderer. It’s for Dave’s protection as much as mine. Even if it’s just for a few months. That’s all. Nothing too drastic.
I need to think about how to tell Mum that I want to go live at Dad’s, though. But my phone is beeping like mad. Finally, I’ve got a signal. Oh. It’s Lauren. It’s …
Oh no.
No. No. NO!
It’s …
This isn’t good. Oh prawning HELL.
I need to get over there. Trust me. This is bad. BAD. Everything about me can wait. Lauren is in TROUBLE. THIS could go viral.
Copyright © 2018 by Rae Earl
