MR. ROBOTO

            Tinkering hands fly across the room, grabbing and discarding metal, sifting through nuts and bolts and soup ladle handles to try and see what would fit best. As it stands, the robot is nothing but an amalgamation of hodge-podge junk-drawer parts held together by electrical tape, but that’s okay. It's just in its beta stage. When Mr. Roboto is finished, he’s going to be intergalactic. Totally tubular. Something to make the kids at Charley Middle School gawk and be envious of.

Wilbie Parrish, self identifying as the Neon Rocketeer, has turned her bedroom into a meshuga lab. Wham! shimmies in their scantily-clad outfits on Top of the Pops, curtains are drawn fully closed, and her old Atari 2600 lay in pieces on the floor. She thinks she may need it for parts, and since she’s getting an NES for Christmas (confirmed, she saw it wrapped up in the linen closet), she’s not worried about trashing her old console.

Earlier in the semester, the boys at school balked at her for wanting to join Junior STEM, ostracizing Wilbie in front of their entire eighth-grade class. At that point, even if she did join the club she knew she wouldn’t be welcomed, so building a functioning robot and rubbing in their snot-nosed faces would be the sweetest form of revenge. Sweeter than a Chupa Chups lollipop or a Cola-Cola Slurpee. Those were Wilbie’s favorites.

“Wilbie?” Her mother pounds on the bedroom door despite the DO NOT DISTURB sign. “What are you doing in there? I’ve been trying to call you for ages.”

 “Mommmm,” Wilbie groans. “I’m in the middle of something! I’m trying to work!”
There’s a belabored sigh on the other side of the door. This isn’t the first time Ms. Parrish has had to deal with her daughter’s whimsical antics.

“I hate to break it to you, but the work day is nine-to-five." She scolds. “It’s nearly seven.”

“Well then…I’m on overtime. Tell the boss. I’m working on a very important project that demands all of my attention.”

“Now listen--I don’t care if you’re being commissioned by Ronald Reagan himself!  You better come down for dinner or your brother will eat your casserole. I’m not giving you another warning. Whatever thing you’re making in there can wait. It’s about time you grow up.”

With that, Wilbie’s mother stomps down the stairs, irate and exhausted. Before heading down for something she’s not even hungry for, Wilbie glances shrewdly at her creation. 

Earlier that day, she carved the robot’s face out of her little sister’s Etch-A-Sketch, meticulously crafting a pair of winking eyes and a rather sharp smile in the pixelated screen. She also stole her brother’s monster trucks (unbeknownst to Tommy) to refashion their giant wheels. That meant that as long as the batteries weren’t rusted, Wilbie would be able to control Mr. Roboto remotely when he came to life.

 Imagine how frightened the STEM kids’ll be when a robot saunters into their latest meeting. Wilbie snickers. Man, I would kill to see that.

The only thing left to do was find an object for the chest cavity. As much as she would’ve loved to have him up and running, Wilbie wasn’t going to rush Mr. Roboto’s design. Perfection requires patience, especially with something so delicate.

“Wilba Elizabeth Parrish, this is your last call!”

Not wanting to exacerbate the tension, Wilbie reluctantly plods downstairs. Not surprisingly, her dinner was icebox cold, and both her siblings had already finished eating. While she shovels breaded green beans into her mouth, Wilbie spots her little sister’s Lite Brite abandoned on the carpet.

“That’s it!” She suddenly cries, eyes lighting up like a beacon. “That’s his heart! That’s the final piece!”

Before her parents have time to make sense of the matter, Wilbie is gathering pegs from the floor and pouring them out in her room. Painstakingly she plugs the pink and red ones, forming a small, blocky heart with what’s left of her sister’s collection. Blue pegs fly to the floor, green pegs are tossed to the side, and every other color forms an abstract plastic rainbow along her bedroom carpet.

Finally, Wilbie steps back to admire her work.

“There he is!” She squeals, grabbing her brother’s remote. She presses a button and the creature sways to the side. “There’s Mr. Roboto!”

Etch-A-Sketch head, dinner-fork arms, monster truck wheels, and a little Lite-Brite heart. He’s alive, the tiny thing, alive like Mary Shelley’s myriad creation. Wilbie begins to jump around excitedly, her own heart threatening to leap outside her ribcage.

As if on cue, the Styx song erupts from her radio.