Look Under the Bed

My father made me watch Gremlins when I was six.

I was trying to avoid the family popcorn event by acting as though I had important coloring to do at the kitchen table, but Dad knew what I was really doing.

“It’s not scary. Get out here,” he shouted from the living room.

I only remember parts—a slime-green claw to the face, the singing of “Hi, Ho, Hi Ho” in treacherous unison, Spike, saying “Bye Bye, Billy,” and the narrator telling the audience at the end of the film to check under their bed for they might have a Gremlin in their house.

While Jenny slept safely on the top bunk, I checked under my bed every night, for years until I eventually forgot the warning.

Twenty-one years later, I watched Gremlins again. This time not afraid but disappointed for the fear was gone, a part of me like someone had sliced off the tip of my ear and left me like a cat without a tail—unbalanced.

Sometimes you need fear. It lets you know you are alive mentally, for life, like movies are unknown in their outcomes (unless it is a really bad movie). You have to wait for the ending that will happen no matter what.

Gremlins could be as real as many things in this world that cannot be explained. But, we’ll all still continue to check under or beds looking for it.