Gremlins
My great grandmother’s house was like no other house I have been to. She was a product of the Great Depression, so she always found a use for an object no matter how insignificant it may seem. She had secrets waiting to be uncovered in every room, and she was all too aware of my desire to hunt those treasures until they were unearthed.
I was banned from the basement. She told me that all her secrets and goodies were down there, but that I was not allowed. Sometimes when she would let me bring my black and tan dachshund, Maggie, over for a visit, I would quietly yet sternly coax the dog down the steep basement steps. I would then fib to my grandma. I would tell her that the dog went down the stairs and that I needed to go retrieve her.
While I was “looking” for Maggie, a dog that would never leave my side by choice, I would try to take in what I could. A peek under the fabric here and a tilt of a box lid there; scoping out my next adventure when I could slip down to the basement again.
If I happened to be taking a bit too long, my grandma would yell from her stove top in the kitchen, “Did you find that dog yet?”
I would yell back up from the depth of the treasure trove, “No, not yet. It’s pretty dark down here!”
“Be careful of the gremlins,” she would say, and just like that, I was halfway up the stairs, dog under arm.
She would frequently warn me of the gremlins that resided in her home. They lived in closed cabinets, dusty boxes and in between the couch cushions. I never knew exactly what a gremlin was, but my grandma informed me that they would bite my hands. My imaginations ran wild. I pictured little men living all through my grandmother’s house. Little men who looked just like the Quaker Oats man except with buckled shoes and giant horse teeth.
I was very conscious of my fingers and where they went at my grandmother’s house. To this day I am much more conscious of my surroundings, assuming that gremlins grew in her cabinets on lost raisins and cracker crumbs, only to venture out into the world assuming human form. Some days it seems that I might have encountered one here or there.