MARK MY WORD: ROBOTS CAN'T REPLACE KIDS, SPILLS AND SELECTIVE HEARING

Scientists speculate that human-looking robots could one day serve as surrogate children in our homes.

Forget it. Parenting would never be the same. Imagine a household where children always obeyed their parents and never wrote on the walls.

It just wouldn't seem like a family without life's little tragedies.

Robots, in my opinion, could never take the place of kids. For one thing, scientists couldn't build such creatures with such selective hearing.

Children are born with the uncanny ability to hear Britney Spears on the stereo in the next room while at the same time they can't hear a word their parents say when they're two feet away.

Becca and Bailey can hear the words "ice cream" even in a whisper. But they simply don't hear their parents' repeated instructions to clean up their rooms.

That explains why so many scientists and frustrated parents are laboring to come up with robots that understand and obey voice commands.

Humanoid robots, no doubt, would tidy up their rooms without even being asked. That might be less frustrating for parents, but it wouldn't be real life. It's being more like being in the middle of a TV show.

Real life isn't like the new science fiction movie, "A.I." Real life is about chocolate milk and muddy shoeprints on the just-vacuumed, living-room carpet.

It's about spilled nail polish and gum stuck in the hair.

Being a parent involves a lot of refereeing, breaking up all those childhood fights blamed on sibling rivalry.

But there's more to parenting than peace talks, there's the great satisfaction of knowing that you won't be bored and that you can go to all those children's movies without feeling out of place.

Being a parent gives you an excuse to play Barbie Detective and Huggly's Sleepover on the home computer.

I wouldn't want to play computer games with a robot kid. I'd never win.

Scientists like Maja Mataric, a robotics researcher at the University of Southern California, believe humanoid robots could be on the market within five years.

She recently told The Associated Press that an all-robot soccer team could defeat a team of humans by 2025, which, no doubt, would devastate America's soccer moms and lead to serious eligibility problems at the summer Olympics.

Mataric's robot isn't kicking soccer balls, but is learning to dance the Macarena. My kids haven't shown much interest in soccer balls either, but they can dance the Macarena without the help of a single scientist.

Personally, I don't think we need robots to dance the Macarena. But we could use them in the White House and Congress. They, no doubt, could do a bang-up job as politicians, although it would put the end to all those chicken-dinner speeches. Robot politicians could campaign 24 hours a day. There'd be no need to sleep and eat.

Personally, I like having children that do fall asleep. Robot children wouldn't need to go to bed. There'd be no need for bedtime stories.

I prefer the real thing, sticky fingers and all, although it would be nice, I admit, if our cars' interiors didn't look like laundry rooms.

Some scientists may believe human-like robots are right around the corner and one day may make us extinct.

I'm not buying it. Humans are just too complicated.

We're not like TV sets. We don't turn off and on easily.

Besides, no one has been able to duplicate the human shopping gene, which sends even 5-year-olds running to the mall. Robots wouldn't understand all those half-off sales.

Future fanatics talk of placing microscopic robots in our brains to augment human intelligence. I think it would be a mistake. The robots would be shocked to find out how we think.

They'd even be more shocked to learn we like our peculiar ways, milk mustaches, bedtime stories and all.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.