Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
My boring head has been playing games with me again. Recently, it has been telling me that ‘I am an egg’. Wait. The Editor might not like that idea. ‘I am a Robot. That sounds better. Much more closer to reality and ‘iron hard’ truth … pun on the word iron, of course.
Recently, I watched a video about a robot designed specifically for household chores. The robot was named Atlas. It - will ‘it’ be addressed as an ‘it’ or ‘he’, after all the robot has been programmed to replicate our routine? He might lack our soul, but he follows the routine of every stay-at-home mum.
So, Mr Atlas starts his day at 6am. Walks out to get the newspaper. Prepares coffee. Puts the sandwich on the grill. Packs the lunch for kids. Lures the sleepy heads out of their warm beds. Pours a few drops of milk down their throats. Dresses them up and at the tick of 6.50am waves them off to school.
The morning hues blend into the afternoon and then the evening. Mr Atlas tirelessly performs all his tasks and at the end-of-the-day silently switches his system off.
How is my life any different from this programmed machine? I stand up at the first sound of the alarm and follow the clock like a holy command throughout the day, to the extent that the seconds on which I push the CD in the player every afternoon to the turn of the road where the song ends, is even the same.
The red light, the scenery, my speed, is all so accurately planned that afterwards I feel for the ‘switch off’ button. I only wish to snooze in a corner like Mr Atlas without any worries.
I am a Robot. I am a mum, programmed by the wheels of life.
