When I was 4 or 3, I was quite a bit bored in my room. I had nothing to do, Magic Schoolbus wasn’t playing, and my dad was on the computer. I had just woke up, and I already ate breakfast. I decided to turn on my TV. Channel 1… 2… 3… All of the things were boring. Nothing appealed. CNN, BBC2, Discovery… BBC2? What is that? What is that yellow box? Is that a spider on it? What is that metal triangle? Why does the yellow box have 3 red lights?

This intrigued me. Then, I noticed something. A thing kept on moving back and forth, and kept shining on the camera. Then I heard the announcer commenting on the “absolute sheer destruction of Panic Attack”. What is Panic Attack? Then I noticed the yellow box was getting destroyed. I quickly made a connection in my head. Yellow Box… Holes… “absolute sheer destruction of Panic Attack”. Wow, I realized, they were destroying the Yellow Box named Panic Attack. By why? How did they not get hurt? The yellow box had 2 sharp spikes and just stabbed a grey metal box with spikes… A grey metal box with spikes?

I continued on watching this show. I then realized after 5 minutes… The boxes were robots. They were pitted in some awesome robot gladiator show. And I already learned what the grey box, the triangle, and the yellow box were. The yellow box was Panic Attack, the grey box with spikes Dead Metal, and the triangle was Shunt. They all were fighting. Then the commercials started rolling and I realized the show was called Robot Wars. I ran up to my dad to record it all the time, and he did. By the time I got back the show was over unfortunately. My dad looked up on the internet what time the show was going to be, and he got some VHSes and recorded them.

2 weeks later my dad started to record Robot Wars, and I watched them. I was now familiar with many of the robots, and I wanted to build my own. I don’t know why I liked the show, maybe it was because of the sheer awesomeness of robots destroying each other. I had a large amount of K’NEX, a building toy similar to legos. I started designing and making some designs, and I crashed them into each other. It was fun.

Eventually I started designing effective designs. My dad noticed I was into robots, so he showed me some documentaries about them. I kept watching them and watching them. Eventually I decided I wanted to build robots for my job. Already I was deciding on a career path, while some other kids wanted to be GI Joe or a dinosaur when they grew up.

When I moved to the US from England, I continued to watch robot fighting shows. The one here wasn’t robot wars, it was Battle Bots. I was building better and better robots, and when I got some sets that had motors I was thrilled. I had so many ideas, and when I was 5 I build a toy robot made form easy-to-break plastic that could flip over 5 pounds of weight and destroy a piece of paper. I also wasted a lot of aluminum foil, making my robots look similar to the ones I saw on TV. I became so obsessed with robots that I was building them whenever I can. It got to the point to where I have over 500 pounds (weight) of building toys and sets and kits.

Just me getting a glimpse of robots fighting for 3 seconds while flipping channels changed my life forever. Instead of sitting around playing with GI Joe and such, I was doing Multiplication when I was 5, and I was understanding engineering and design. Without me watching those 3 few seconds and paying attention, I would most likely end up being just a normal average student. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it is just better to be more advanced.