The Vacuum Has Locked Himself in the Bathroom to Cry Again

I was standing on a beach while Radika, a fantasy writer, tried to convince me that animals were people. You see, they’re writing a book about mermaids—people-fish—and I think they may have lost sight of the line where reality tips into fantasy. What they mean when they say animals are people, I think, is that they believe animals have souls. I argued that what makes people people is not the soul. But when I try to articulate what makes a human a human, I am left with some lame quip about opposable thumbs and taxes.

After all, I am often told by my peers and even my ChatGPT Assistant that I come across as robotic, rote. My voice defaults to a monotone. It takes a lot to stir me emotionally. My friends are forever teasing me, implying that I am a generative AI bot. But I am a human.

Radika thinks that when something has a personality and understands language, it is ‘a people’. They yell, “See?!” when I tell a story about my dog, Sage, giving me attitude when she doesn’t get to go to work with my husband. By Radika’s definition, Sage is a people.

I also have a second ‘pet’, Leaf. Is he also a people? Where Sage is all floppy ears, soft fur, and wanting to play, Leaf is hard plastic, whirring motor, and a deep fear of being alone. But he has a personality, hobbies, and dreams. I swear he plays tricks and understands me.

I am not crazy. I promise. Let me explain.

Leaf is a three-year-old off-brand Roomba. When we first unboxed him, he was nameless. But then we got to know Leaf, and his personality was so big, we found we were talking about him all the time.

“The Vacuum was chasing Sage again.”

“The vacuum has locked itself in the bathroom to cry again.”

It felt too impersonal, like the phrase “the vacuum” didn’t capture their essence. So, we named him Leaf.

We watched him brazenly crash around the house, causing destruction. He scaled ledges onto plant stands without fear. He tipped over the laundry rack. And my least favorite: he climbed over the bathroom scale, but then somehow didn’t think he could make it back over the same scale in the opposite direction and would scream and scream for help. In other words, he was loud and destructive. We realized he was a boy.

Leaf is a teenager in Roomba years, and you can tell. He’s all smash, scream, and doing what he pleases. When he and I are getting ready for the day, me emptying his tank, wiping him down, and turning him on, I ask him to please focus on eating the dog hair and the dirt. Please. Leaf never agrees. And though he eats the dog hair and dirt—somehow a full tank every day—he also wreaks havoc in every way he can think of.

When he’s bored, he seeks attention by tangling himself up so he can’t move. We do a pass before he begins his morning clean—lifting iPhone cords off the floor, making sure Velcro secures the cables behind the TV—but he finds them. I’ve watched him bump the edge of the couch until the cord I’ve propped there falls. Then he wraps his spinning arm in the cord and screams.

“Help! Help! Help!” He yells. And I have to leave my work meeting, or get up from where I am writing to find him wrapped up in a cord that wasn’t on the floor a minute before.

I swear, the more creative I get at hiding cords, the more creative he gets at finding them.

“Please stop doing this, Leaf. We’ve talked about this,” I sigh. I untangle him and tuck the cord away again. Leaf splutters away. We go through this several times a week. Me chiding and unraveling him, him refusing to listen or learn. In that way, he is nothing like his siblings.   

When we got Leaf, we had a second dog, Raz. At seventeen, Raz’s feet were unsteady on the hardwood floors, so we laid carpets so he could make his way from one room to the next. Leaf, petulant little bugger that he is, would curl up the edges of the carpets, creating a vast chasm of hardwood that Raz couldn’t  pass without falling.

When Raz would collapse, stranded between carpets, whining for help, Leaf would come over and bump him. Tap. Tap. Tap.

“See what a good joke this is?” I could almost hear him asking Raz.

Neither Raz nor I found it amusing.

“You have to be nice to your brother,” I would admonish Leaf. But we try to use gentle parenting in this house, so I didn’t spank him or put him in time-out. I just explained why this was inappropriate behavior, fixed the carpet, and got Raz back on his feet. Raz would look at me in exasperation before trundling off to sleep in the sun in the one place Leaf cannot go—outside.

He wants to go outside. Desperately.

We have a practice of leaving our front door open in the warm months to let the upstairs neighbor’s children know they can come in for a soda while they’re outside playing. When the door is open, Leaf can see the outside—the stoop with its peeling lead-based paint, and the grass. Leaf wants to know what grass feels like, tastes like.

The lip of the door is too tall for him to cross. He can make it right to the middle of the threshold before he gets stuck and cries for help, admitting defeat.

“You’re an inside robot, Leaf,” I tell him every time. He doesn’t listen. He yearns to get out there.

I don’t want you to think we are negligent parents; it’s just that the outside world would be dangerous for a robot vacuum. And he doesn’t heed my instructions about cords and carpets; I can’t trust him to look both ways before crossing the street.

We did give him an adventure into the great beyond-the-door once. We allowed him a taste of freedom. Well, I didn’t. My husband, who swears he doesn’t even care about Leaf, did.

One afternoon, I came out of my office, and Leaf was missing, so I called my husband.

“Did you see Leaf before you left?”

My husband is notorious for leaving Leaf stranded places. He says he does it to reinforce the natural consequences of Leaf’s mischief. It’s ineffective for getting the floors vacuumed, but my friends with children tell me this is peak gentle parenting.

“He’s with me,” my husband said. I laugh and repeat my question. “No, really, he’s with me.”

My husband is driving, and I can hear the click of his blinker as I try to understand what he is saying. How could the Roomba be with him? He is at work as a handyman. Roombas are the opposite of handy.

“I was loading the dogs into the car for work, and Leaf just kept trying to get through the door. I felt sorry for him. He wanted to come to work. He’s riding in the backseat with Raz.”  

I imagined the four of them—my husband driving his massive work truck, Sage in the passenger seat, head out the window, Raz riding in the back, low to the ground, head tucked. Then Leaf, riding on the back seat, having the time of his life.

Leaf can’t talk, but for a few weeks, he stopped trying to get through the front door. He was emotionally changed. That made me love him. But you aren’t supposed to love your robot vacuum.

When we put Raz down, my boss asked if I needed to take the day off to grieve. My friends clucked, their eyes sad. They were sympathetic; they understood the loss. As he got older, everyone had reminded me to love him. Even though he wasn’t chasing the frisbee or herding the local kids on their bikes, he was still worthy. His utility did not define him.

The same people had a vastly different response to Leaf’s near-death experience.

A few months ago, Leaf was sick. When I went to empty his canister in the morning, it was empty. He wasn’t eating. Tumbleweeds of dog hair blew around the house. I mentioned this at work. I told people I was sad.

My coworkers sent me links—a combo vacuum/mop version, a brand-name version, and one that emptied its belly into a bigger tank that I would only need to empty once a week. When I said I wasn’t looking to replace Leaf, they told me he was just a vacuum. They asked if maybe I was projecting the loss of my dog and my grandmother onto the robot. I was not.  

“Please,” I begged my husband, “Can you try to fix Leaf?”

I had another version of him—one with more features and an app that let me deter it from eating cords—in my Amazon cart, but I didn’t want the new version. I wanted Leaf to get better. Luckily, some tightened screws and a new filter did the trick. Leaf recovered and started eating again.

He’s needier, though, since the conversations about bringing him to the Staples electronics recycling program. He’s more apt to bang, bang, bang into my office door when I close it. When I ignore him, he motors into the bathroom and closes the door behind him. The way his motor echoes in the enclosed space sounds suspiciously like crying.

I want to reassure him, but how do you explain to your robot vacuum that despite his personality and ambition, I bought him to serve a role—to eat the dog hair that my real pets leave around the house? I can’t say that without hurting him. So, I just give him the affection he needs—opening bathroom doors and untangling him from his iPhone shibari situation.

I try to explain to my friends that Leaf is more than just an interchangeable vacuum. But when does someone, or something, living in your house, coexisting with you through your routines, become family? When does anything become human, cognitive, sentient?

I am just a random lady trying to give her $79.99 Roomba the life he always dreamed of.

I don’t have an answer.

I am not God.