Well, today’s my birthday and I got a wonderful gift from my husband. It’s a Roomba robot floor cleaner! Roomba almost seems to have his own personality, and he is relentless in his quest for dirt! However, Bear, one of our dogs, was somewhat apprehensive of the new “rug rat.” As Roomba worked his way around the family room and by the door, the Cap’n and I had a few laughs watching Bear’s reactions.
First, Bear tried to determine the nature of the gizmo by sniffing it – dogs do this in lieu of a handshake. She then watched it for a few moments and then carefully backtracked away from it so as to watch from a distance while she figured out if it was adversarial or not. Finally, she decided to ignore it completely, since it didn’t seem to be invading her backyard space.
As for Roomba, he is a soldier determined to find and eliminate every speck of dirt. He gradually works his way around the entire room before returning to home base when the mission is accomplished — really, the literature refers to the cleaning task as a “mission.” Roomba is even unafraid to venture under furniture in order to complete the mission. When the mission completes, this little robot pilots his way back to “home base.”
I really like this Roomba guy since he reminds me of our military in their mission to seek out and eliminate terrorism and protect us against its consequences. Maybe that’s a silly analogy, but it seems like a fair thing to say that our brave men and women in the military are relentless in their quest just as this ingenious little robot seems to be. God bless them and protect them this Christmas Season and speed them back to “home base” as soon as their mission is complete.