A Series of Drabbles: Day 5

Fifth of December, 2011


Todays Word of The Day:


Hexapod n


Any organism or being with six legs.

When I was a kid I was into robots, robots and cartoons. I used to build robots out of legos and just sat in my room and played with them, gave them robot voices and other stuff.

It was only when I was a kid that I openly talking about my fascination with robots, outwardly I was just like any other guy my grade. I was outgoing, I played sports, I had a healthy social life but once I was home alone, or even home I relished the time I could spend with my robots, reading, learning and even eventually building one myself.

Each year there was a conference for the robot industry in midtown and I always wanted to go so badly but I’ve never been able to. When you’re under 16, you can’t go without an adult no matter how crazy it seems and once I was finally old enough to go myself I couldn’t because I didn’t want to lose my reputation as a cool kid.

So once I considered myself an adult and I’d forgotten all about the shame I used to carry around me, I went, and I had the most fun I’d had in ages.

Here were people just as nerdy and strange as me and they were into robots. I walked amongst these awesome people and I couldn’t help but smile. I found myself at a booth with a little kid sitting on the table with a robot in front of him smiling as he fiddled the controls he held in his hand. He looked up at me and nodded.

“What’s that?” I asked, looking at the strange robot he’s showing off. It was a robot with six legs with the plate with the wiring in the middle.

“A hexapod,” he answered. “I finished it yesterday in time for this… Look,” he fiddled with the controls and made it do several kinds of tricks including tilting back in its hind legs.

I don’t think I’ve ever regretting wasting my childhood on caring about being cool when I could have built hexapod that can tilt back on their hind legs.

As I was leaving the convention center I had a phonecall and seeing it was Ben, I took a deep breath and answered it.

“Tucker!” He yelled. “Where the hell are you? You were supposed to be here half an hour ago?” I looked at my watch, sighing again.

“Shit, I’ve been at the robot convention down town, I’ll be right there.” The silence from Ben amused me.

“So… Did you just say robots?”

“I did,” I promted, closing the argument. “Party tonight at the plot, right? Give me half an hour, be ready to go when I honk.” I closed the phone and strode towards my car smiling at the day I’ve had. 

Word Count: 470

Fun factor: 4/5

A Hexapod