Like the preceding entry, this is more android futurism, so I don’t have a lot more to say on the topic. R.F. are desperately obscure, even for this blog, to the extent that I simply can’t find any information about them, though I remember hearing this single as a child and being thrilled it at how modern and futuristic it sounded, since it was the 70’s, and mankind was obviously doomed, though in that particular way of the time that suggested people would probably be wearing Unisex Jumpsuits as it happened.
However, it does bring back this roughly contemporaneous memory:
I was a very lonely kid, since, besides my sister, there were only three other children in my street, all of them girls. I soon learnt not to play with them, especially as a group, because then it would always devolve into one of two games, the first being “Let’s put make up on him!” One of the Scary Twins from next door was the school High Jumping star, so there was no outrunning her, and the combined weight of four older girls were always enough to overpower me.
Besides which, they never did a good job at it. I’d always grimly accept my fate, but would always get my hopes up when they handed me the mirror: maybe this time I’d look like Gene Simmons. Of course, I’d be eternally-disappointed: the makeover was always Pure John Waters. (When the New Romantics came around, I remember being very relieved that I was too young to have to bother trying to slap it on like Nick Rhodes).
The second game was ‘Beauty Pageant’, which would mean being forced to sit in a chair in the backyard, whilst all four girls ran back and forth into the house, taking forever to change into a variety of different outfits for the ‘Fashion’ section. As boring as that was, at least it wasn’t the Talent section, which usually devolved into someone singing a song, (usually from ‘Grease’), or what can only charitably be described as ‘Interpretive Dance’ with all the skill of Isadora Duncan... after her famous car ride.
Then would come the moment of truth: I’d have to who was the most beautiful, which meant four sets out eyes boring into your very soul, each one clearly indicating that It Had Better Be Me, Or Else. I got out of this by discovering my inner Kissinger and saying that it was “so hard to make a choice, because you’re all so beautiful” and suggesting that “I wasn’t sure” about whomever I picked, and maybe they’d “have to do it again”. This meant I’d have to sit through it four times, so everyone would win at least once. It was deathly boring, but far less painful to my physical being than only playing it once.
Playing with the girls was always traumatic, so I was usually happy to be left out, or at least that’s what I thought until the twins appeared at our front door with an envelope for my sister. As always, some squealing was involved, so I went to ask what was going on.
My sister explained. “It’s a Birthday Invitation! It’s tomorrow.”
Though I’d never been invited to one, I’d heard about these at school: other Kids had Birthday Parties and invited all their friends. It was supposed to be ‘Neat Fun’. Cake and lollies were definitely involved.
“Wow,” was all I could say, before the girls resumed their over-excited discussion of what was going to be The Best Birthday Party Ever.
Ever so casually, I happened to mention I wasn’t doing anything tomorrow.
Their conversation didn’t falter, so I mentioned that I’d have to be back at home in time for ‘The Wonderful World Of Disney’, which was my Sunday Night ritual, if my sister didn’t want to watch ‘Young Talent Time’.
That got Merrideth’s attention. “You’re NOT INVITED!” She always was the Twin with the mean streak, and was clearly relishing this. I once saw her call her grandmother a ‘stupid old bag’ to her face, and when I told her that wasn’t very nice, she punched me and said ‘she can’t tell anyway’.
Not to say Catherine didn’t have her moments either. “It’s for GIRLS ONLY.”
I didn’t know what to say, so fell back on reverse psychology. “Fine! I didn’t want to come to your stupid birthday party anyway.”
Which, of course, never works: “Fine! Go away then, Slime-on! We have to discuss the party!”
“O.K. Fine!” I’d show them. I’d stomp away, and they’d feel guilty, and then they’d have to invite me.
10 minutes of sitting on the backyard swings later, lazily scraping the dirt with my sandals instead of swinging, I realised they weren’t coming. My burden was heavy - if I looked in the bathroom mirror, surely the words ‘NOT INVITED’ surely would be clearly-visible on my forehead. I couldn’t go to school on Monday, because then they’d All Know.
What do you do in this situation? Well, if you were me, the obvious logical progression of events was to build my very own robot for a best friend, because that would definitely Show Them All.
Of course, I had absolutely zero understanding of electronics, but I knew that wouldn’t matter: books and movies had shown me that kids ended up with Robot Friends all the time. You’d build a robot, and then Something Would Happen: being struck by lightning; magical wiring; your four-eyed friend called Brains; or that crazy old inventor from up the road. (Kids always were friends with crazy professors, unfortunately I only had Old Ray in my street, the elderly widower whom our mothers clearly instructed us to be polite to if he said hello, but that ‘if he invited us inside, we were to say no and come back home right away’).
Of course, I knew deep down that this wouldn’t really happen. My childhood was always filled with hope that something Out Of The Ordinary would happen, only to be repeatedly shown that Nothing Ever Did, which soon meant the Scripture Lesson Nuns learnt to hate the sight of me in their classes, with a rather Unchristian passion. But I only needed to give them the impression that I’d built a Cool Robot Friend to fool them long enough to change their minds and invite me to their party. Obviously, I’d be having so much fun with my Robot Friend, that I’d really have to think about it, because a boring old party wouldn’t possibly be anywhere near as much fun as Robot-related hi-jinks, but maybe I could tear myself away for a couple of hours...
As my sister spent the following morning preparing for the party, I made preparations of my own. Mum had recently been given some glass saucepans, tinted a sexy seventies orange, the larger box for which made a perfect torso. The smaller saucepan box was a good-sized head. Cutting up the long cardboard tubes my father had bought home from work made perfect arms and legs capped off by dissected paper plate hands and feet. Wrapping everything in aluminium foil gave a convincing robot-style effect, until I realised you couldn’t draw on it, which I solved by drawing suitably-impressive electronics onto some butcher’s paper with crayon, and gluing it on top of it. Still, the eyes weren’t quite impressive enough. Two Patty Cake wrappers later, and I stepped back, satisfied. I decided to call him Robbie, (because that’s obviously what you call a robot, don’t you know anything?)
The heavy work done, I set about preparing stage two of my cunning scheme. I’d realised no-one would be fooled if the robot didn’t talk, so I’d glued the box of the head the right way on that I could simply pull back the cardboard tag, and open up the robot’s ‘brain cavity’, which was big enough to hide Dad’s portable tape recorder inside. (Never mind the weight of the thing was probably heavier than the entire weight of the robot).
I had it all figured. I locked myself in the bathroom for that ‘spooky electronic reverb’ effect, started the tape, counted to 100, and then started recording the things the robot would be saying to me IN A VOICE LIKE THIS. I don’t think I have to even describe it. It’d then count to twenty inside my head, and record the next line. This way, all I had to do was to start it playing, and then the robot would be convincingly talking to me.
I managed to impress even myself. This would totally work – even if Robbie was now too top-heavy to stand up by himself without my holding him, which I would obviously be doing because we were such good friends and all.
I took Robbie out to pre-emptively wow my sister with, but, of course, she had long left for the party by then, so I could only find my father, who was in the kitchen, reading the paper.
“I built a Robot!”
He didn’t look up, and just grunted something non-committal.
“He talks!” I said, then waited for Robbie to talk. Hadn’t it been one hundred by now?
I waited expectedly, until Dad eventually said “Look, I’m reading. Go bother your mother.”
“Mmmmph mmm brmph,” said Robbie. I’d forgotten that the tape recorder was now inside a sealed box wrapped in foil.
That was when Mum came in, who didn’t even give me time to explain I’d built a robot before she started lecturing me on the cost of aluminium foil, and that I should have asked before doing something like that.
“Mmmph mmmmph mmmm ooo,” said Robbie.
“Go play outside,” Dad said, so I did, though not before hearing him say something about it being “From your side of the family, Woman”.
I quickly did some ‘internal rewiring’, (ie. turning up the volume of the tape recorder as high as it would go), counted to 50, the ever-so-casually strolled into the backyard with Robbie, knowing I’d be easily spotted over the low fence, and they’d have to be impressed. I was so wrapped up in my performance that I was halfway to the swing set before I noticed the neighbouring back yard was completely empty.
It turned out they were all in the front yard, and it wasn’t just my Sister and Cathy. There were at least six other girls there. Who were they all? How did they know the Twins when they never seemed to leave our block? They were all squealing and laughing. Were they putting makeup on someone else? But that was *our* thing.
A couple of minutes later, I restarted the whole performance in the front yard, but quickly realised the high hedge along their border meant that they could only see me if I jumped up and down on the verandah, and then only just. Since Robbie was far smaller than me, I would have had to hold him above my head. I slumped in defeat, until I jumped the necessary foot into the air when Robbie suddenly screamed “MY NAME IS ROBBIE I AM A ROBOT”.
More ‘rewiring’, followed, until I realised the only way they’d be able to see me was if I nonchalantly played in their driveway, and whilst I’d like to say that would have been too transparently desperate an action for me to have done, I did it anyway.
Robbie and I stood at the curb, with me laughing over-enthusiastically at some imagined witticism from Robbie, in that particular way kids trying to look like they’re having more fun than you when they clearly aren’t do.
“Oh Robbie, that’ so funny,” I said.
The girls noticed me right away, and Merrideth ran up to the fence protectively. “Go away Slime-on. You’re know you’re Not Invited.”
“Huh. I don’t want to come to your stupid party,” I lied.
“Sure.... Why are you here then?”
Robbie instantly jumped in with: “HELLO MY NAME IS ROBBIE I AM A ROBOT”
I was vindicated, though rushing through my speech, just in case. “Robbie is my best friend and he’s a robot too and I’m just showing him around the neighbourhood”.
She started her contemptuous reply: “Just go away, that’s the dumbest...”
Robbie blurted out: “THAT WAS A GREAT GAME WE PLAYED EARLIER YOU ALWAYS THINK OF THE BEST GAMES TO PLAY SIMON”
Merrideth was starting to look really angry, since the other girls had gathered by the fence by now.
“You’re ruining my party, you lameo”.
I snorted again. “I don’t want to go to...”
“WE CAN GO FOR A FLY USING MY ROCKET LEGS IF YOU WANT SIMON”, Robbie blurted again.
“He flies?” Catherine said, contemptuously.
“Yes, he does.” I lied. “He flew me to the top of the hill and back earlier”. I thought that would impress her.
It didn’t. “Prove it then.”
Oops - quick, what was a legitimate-sounding excuse? “He doesn’t feel like it.”
“I’m going to go get Mum and she’ll tell you you have to go away and not bother us.”
“Go away!” my sister added , clearly getting angry, or embarrassed, or both.
“Robbie and I have lots of stuff to do any...”
Robbie interupted again. “HA HA HA THAT WAS A FUNNY JOKE YOU TOLD EARLIER SIMON YOU ALWAYS TELL FUNNIER JOKES THAN ANYONE”. In retrospect, I should have programmed him to be just a tad more subtle with his sycophantism.
How had this happened? All the girls were walking away by now. Merrideth stuck her middle finger up at me, and said both Robbie and I could “Sit on this and rotate,” then followed.
“Fine then,” I said.
“Is he really your brother?” one girl I’d never seen before asked my sister.
“No. Mum told me he was adopted.” And with that, they went inside.
“Fine then,” I said again, to no-one in particular.
“THAT’S NICE OF YOU TO INVITE ME BUT I NEED TO GO AND CHANGE MY OIL BUT SIMON SHOULD GO TO YOUR PARTY WHEN I’M DOING THAT”
And with that I realised my friendship with Robbie was inevitably doomed. He was making my already socially-awkward situations even more awkward. I recycled him into a Scooby Doo-style Haunted House by the next weekend.
All that being said, you can easily see why I would choose to side with the androids when the Inevitable Robot Apocalypse happened.
As a footnote, my sister was kind enough to bring me back a piece of birthday cake that no-one had wanted, because it had ’fallen on the floor’. I’d tell you I was too proud to eat it, but I suspect you won’t believe me.
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