Pound For Pound, Gremlins Are More Dangerous Than Aliens

An essay about managing anxieties

There are two kinds of basic fears I struggle with and, friends, I struggle. I know men are supposed to laugh in the face of danger, but I’ve never been one of those dudes who keeps cool no matter what. That doesn’t mean I don’t’ confront my fears. It just means my definition of courage is doing what needs to be done, even if what needs to be done is scary, with giant armpit sweat stains.

One way that I manage my fears is to acknowledge them. If I can name my fears, and identify them, then I can lure them into the light. I might shriek when I see what I’m afraid of, but at least I’ll know what I’m dealing with.

There’s a movie from 1997 called The Edge about two men trying to survive the Alaska wilderness after a freak plane accident. It stars Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin and the specifics of the plot aren’t that important (although the screenplay, written by David Mamet, is full of his trademark brand of over-the-top macho poetry.) What’s important is that their efforts to find food and shelter are complicated by a hungry bear with a taste for humans. Eventually, they kill the bear, although it comes with a cost.

The movie demonstrates, however, that fighting a bear at night is scary. Fighting a bear is scary, regardless of the circumstances, but it is better to see it charging in the daylight. In the past, I was satisfied with letting my fears lurk, and growl, in the shadows. They’re easier to ignore. For instance once, when I was unemployed and drinking too much, I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills, so I hid them in my kitchen junk drawer.

This was not an optimal strategy. Eventually, the bear pounces from the dark, or your electricity gets turned off.

I have, in my life, what I call Alien fears, named after the monsters in the Alien movie franchise, and Gremlin fears, the titular beasties in Gremlins, and its tragically underrated sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch. It helps me to know which of my fears is an Alien, and which is a Gremlin.

Alien fears are fears that are beyond my control. I have no control over whether or not the commercial starship I’m working on decides to answer a distress call from a mysterious planet. In that context, I’m just a blue-collar space contractor working for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. How am I supposed to know their evil plan to harvest an extraterrestrial killing machine? I, mean if I had never seen a giant pulsing, leathery alien egg before, I may look at it too closely? Why would I know there’s a facehugger in there ready to impregnate me with a xenomorph? In a way, the xenomorph in Alien is like a bear, if a bear was a giant black skeleton with a penis head full of teeth and acid blood.

My Alien fears are random and shocking, proverbial monkey wrenches thrown into the gears of life. I am afraid of the unexpected. As the ancient saying goes: shit happens. I am afraid of that shit happening. And it happens: I’ve gotten phone calls at midnight with bad news and had personal health scares. I’ve sat in a meeting that turned suddenly, like a horror movie, into a mass layoff. Many years ago I watched a terrorist attack on television only to run outside and see the smoke in the distance. I was scared when those happened to me, and I’m scared they’ll happen again. The only way I was able to face those fears was to accept them, and then do the best I can.

Just know that sometimes in this life there’s an alien loose on your starship. It is not your fault. I guess maybe never trust corporations? But those lessons are almost always learned after the fact. Don’t be hard on yourself, it’s not normal for a corporation to want to use their employees as human incubators for living parasitic weapons. You’ll be scared but don’t back down.

Watch the backs of your loved ones is my advice, I guess. Try not to split up. Grab flamethrowers. Never, ever, go searching for the alien in a dark tunnel. And, if you can, try to lure the alien into the airlock. Afterward, go to therapy.

Then there are my Gremlin's fears. Gremlins are different from Aliens. Pound for pound, Gremlins are more dangerous than Aliens. I would rather fight one Alien than thirty Gremlins. Gremlins are lethal little scumbags who do not believe in a fair fight. An alien is an emotionless killing machine. Gremlins want to burn everything down while singing and dancing.

But there are rules to Gremlins. If you follow them, your Gremlin stays an adorable, and relatively harmless, fluffy little Mogwai. But if you break the rules, the Mogwai will turn into a Gremlin, a chaotic, vicious lizard monkey that will try to kill you because it thinks its funny. My Gremlin fears are problems of my own making. They are my bad decisions boomeranging back. I’m most afraid of the consequences of my actions.

The three Gremlin rules are simple. The first rule is more of a weakness. Gremlins hate the light. They prefer the darkness, just like Aliens. Number two: don’t get them wet. That’s how they multiply. And the third rules is never, ever feed a Mogwai after midnight, because then they become Gremlins. If you follow the rules, you don’t get Gremlins.

My Gremlin fears are more earthbound than my Alien fears. My Gremlin fears are the things I can control. I’m visiting family in Texas soon and flying triggers all sorts of anxieties. My Alien fear is that I will die in a plane crash. I know the statistics say the drive to the airport is more dangerous by many factors. But, still, it scares me. My Gremlin fear, however, is that I will not make it to the airport on time. That I will forget my blood-pressure medication. I’m afraid that I don’t see my elderly mom enough.

I have many Gremlin fears: I am afraid of my anger. I will sometimes lose my temper when I’m feeling depressed or disappointed. I’m afraid of rejection, irrelevance, and failure. I know it’s a long list. There’s a terrifying moment in the original Gremlins movie when we see a man dressed as Santa covered in attacking Gremlins — they’re clawing at his head, hanging off his arms. That’s me.

I am not powerless in the face of these kinds of fears. I can wake up earlier so I get to the airport on time. I can take melatonin and listen to Enya during the flight. I can make time in my schedule to see my mom. I have control over my emotions. Therapy helps. But so does meditation and, to my shock, regular exercise. My Gremlin fears are my responsibility. I can control them, usually by following my own rules, like being open and honest with the people in my life, listening to my needs and theirs, and never eating after midnight because eating after midnight is emotional eating and, also, it gives me indigestion.

Knowing which fears I can control, and which I cannot have made a huge difference in how I navigate my life. I imagine this knowledge will come in handy, too, if I ever find myself on a spaceship, or caring for a tiny fuzzy Mogwai.