Gremlins

I’ve never been a great housekeeper. I was telling Sherry about my housekeeping phobia, and said that I often wished for gremlins to clean my house for me.
And Sherry made this weird face. “No! Bite your tongue,” she said. “You want fairies and elves to clean your house, but definitely not gremlins. They’re the ones who make your car battery die the day that your kid stars as the yoghurt cup in the healthy foods play. They’re responsible for your dog getting skunked an hour before the huge party you’re throwing. When you buy the best Christmas presents ever and your house gets burgled, blame the gremlins.”
So I’m writing about the Christmas gremlins. I hope my computer doesn’t crash.
Elaine Glimme

The Christmas Gremlins

The Christmas Gremlins -
Whenever a diaper fails, another gremlin gets his boots.

Only twelve days until Christmas. The gremlins were scurrying around like – well – like little gremlins. It’s their busiest time of the year, as everybody knows.
But Waldo wasn’t scurrying. He was marching ramrod straight - shoulders back, head high, and his feet blue with cold, carrying the garbage out to the compactor behind Gremlin Hall. No, he wasn’t an apprentice gremlin. He had earned boots eleventy-seven years ago. But they’d been stripped from his feet by the head gremlin, the Grand Exalted Gombah, because of the great soda debacle. He’d even been stripped of his socks. Every time Waldo looked down at his feet, he was once again reminded of the whole shameful incident.
It had all happened eight months ago. He was standing over the cola can assembly line adding extra fizz to the cans so that they’d shoot soda into your face when you pulled the tab. But he lost his balance and fell into one of the cans. Imagine Suzy Boonstople’s surprise when she pulled the tab and found a gremlin inside her Monster Cola can. “Never be spotted by a human” – that’s the first rule of being a gremlin, of course, and Waldo had definitely been spotted. But that wasn’t even the worst part. Monster Cola claimed that it was all a publicity stunt. “Find a monster in your Cola, and win a prize.” And the company gave Suzy and her parents an all-expenses-paid trip to Disneyland. And from then on, Monster Cola put a furry monster toy into every millionth can of Monster Cola. Well, I’m here to tell you - sales of Monster Cola shot through the roof. Suzy was happy, Monster Cola was happy, and customers, hoping to find a monster in their cola were happy. Everyone was happy. Except Waldo. He was brought up on charges before the Grand Gombah. Waldo received no mercy. “For conduct unbefitting a gremlin, for being seen by a human, for – shudder- helping, I hereby order you demoted to apprentice gremlin, bottom rank. Hand in your boots, and your socks.
You think Rudolph had it rough? That was nothing compared to the hazing that the other gremlins gave Waldo. They nicknamed him purple toes. They put tacks on the floor next to his bed. And while he was sleeping, they stuck chewing gum into his beautiful handlebar mustache. They never let poor Waldo join in any gremlin games.
But Waldo was determined to win back his boots. This Christmas would be his big chance. He’d show them all. He’d be the worst gremlin ever. Sitting by the garbage compacter in Gremlin Hall, he dreamed of fame and glory and beautiful warm boots decorated with gold braid and maybe a couple of stars symbolizing excellence.
So intent on his daydreaming was Waldo that he didn’t notice Dingus, junior gremlin second class, galloping at him and stumbling over his feet. Dingus had all the finesse of a Labrador puppy with a mouth full of hot dog. “Macafee wants to see us double quick in the conference room,” he said. “To hand out Christmas assignments, I suspect.” Macafee was the head honcho of gremlins. He’d risen to greatness because of his prowess with computers - viruses, worms, spam, phishes, etc. He was master of them all. His crowning achievement had been hacking into Stanford’s computer and flunking the entire senior class.
Waldo slicked down his hair, stuck out his chest, and goose-stepped towards the conference room, determined to excel on any assignment Macafee might give him. Dingus followed grinning like the crocodile after he’d spotted Captain Hook.
As gremlins filled the conference room, Macafee mounted his platform in the front of the room and paced back and forth with a self-important grimace playing on his face. Finally, he cleared his throat with a long harrumph, and began his speech. “Last year’s Christmas was a bitter disappointment,” he began.
The senior gremlins nodded their heads and murmured amongst themselves in agreement. Since Santa had computerized his workshop, Macafee and his staff, naturally, had set about hacking into it. Only, it seemed that Santa had equipped his system with every firewall, spam filter, anti-virus software and pop-up blocker known to man. (or elf). In spite of Macafee’s best efforts, Santa’s Christmas ride had gone off without a hitch.
“This year will be different,’ said Macafee. My ten most senior gremlins will be assigned to project N.P. I, of course, will be the project leader.
“The rest of you will report as follows:” Here, a long list ensued. Waldo stood at attention waiting for his name to be called. Finally, Macafee got to the bottom of the list. “Waldo – air conditioning.”
In his mind, Waldo began mapping out his strategy. He’d head south for hot weather – Hawaii, Rio, Acapulco. Waldo smiled thinking about thawing out his tootsies on sun drenched beaches. Eagerly, he looked up at Macafee, who glared back and continued. “Waldo, you are assigned to Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Greenland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark." Macafee grinned – and a malevolent smirk of a grin it was – A little drool crept from the corner of his mouth as he watched Waldo’s face deflate like a stuck balloon. “And, Waldo, your partner is Dingus.”
Not Dingus! The air conditioning assignment was bad enough, but, with Dingus as a partner, Waldo didn’t stand a chance of earning back his boots.
“Oh boy, air conditioners, oh boy!” Dingus jumped up and down and clapped his hands in expectation. “Do we have a great assignment or what!”
And so the gremlins set to work. While Dingus and Waldo deactivated AC’s throughout Alaska, report of operation N.P. made up most of the coffee break gossip.
In a brilliant coup, Macafee had breached Santa’s firewall and planted an M-17 hula popper virus in Santa’s mainframe which immediately began disabling toy production. “By December 24th, there should be nothing but rust and sawdust to load onto Santa’s sleigh,” said Dermot, one of the senior gremlins.
Waldo’s toes were so cold, he feared that they’d break off. Nevertheless, he persevered – plowing though snow banks to disconnect AC cables, crawling through icy ducts carrying water in a thermos bottle to short out circuits. No one noticed. No one cared. The humans were too busy stringing pop corn and cranking up the heat to notice that their AC wasn’t working.
“W-w-what’s next boss?” Dingus’s teeth chattered so he could hardly speak. “That last one was a good one, huh! Rats chewing the wires. We’re geniuses. Let’s find some more rats.”
‘You adlepated twit,’ thought Waldo. “Right, geniuses,” he sighed and shook his head wallowing in the misery of it all.
Meanwhile, Macafee was creating links from Santa’s e-mail to every other computer on the face of the earth, including those not connected to the Internet. On Christmas Eve, everyone would get the following message:
“The woods are dark
And full of snow.
Santa’s retired,
Ho, ho, ho, ho!
No toys for you.
No, no, no.”

The senior gremlins were working double quick, daydreaming of promotions, million dollar bonuses, and other magnificent perks. They expected the rewards to be great.
It wasn’t fair. Waldo knew he was born to greatness. If only he’d jumped on to the computer craze earlier. Stupid computers!
“I’ve got it, boss,” Dingus danced a little jig of excitement.
Waldo sighed. Oh, joy, he thought. Another stupid idea from the Dingleberry. (his nick- name for Dingus.) “What’s your great idea this time?”
But Dingus didn’t even hear the sarcasm, only the words, ‘what’s your great idea?’ He rubbed his hands in anticipation. “Computers," he said.
Waldo groaned, and he actually pounded his head against an icicle in exasperation. There it was again, that horrible word, his nemesis - computers - the bane of his existence.
Dingus hugged himself in happy anticipation of explaining his very good idea. “The only place in all of our assigned territory where air conditioners are turned on – is the computer rooms. They have to be kept cool for the computers to work.”
Waldo almost smiled. In a fair world, he would have been the one to come up with the idea. He gave a last smack to the wires he was working on, and the two gremlins hurried to the nearest Starbucks to plan their strategy.
The news from the North Pole was nothing but bad – or good. The gremlins had finished ahead of schedule - five days before Christmas. The only toys coming off the assembly line were defective batteries and dolls without arms. And electronic e-mails were flying through the airwaves.
Santa’s elves were feverishly putting in overtime trying to debug the computers. Santa was contacting every news service on earth trying to do damage control - apologizing to the children, promising to make it up to them next year. “Have faith,” he said but in his heart he was scared. Santa had let all the children down. Somehow, some way, he’d screwed up. Maybe computers weren’t the way to go.
Macafee and the senior gremlins had all flown south (first class) to the Bahamas and were sipping margaritas and tanning their toes in the sun.
With only five days left, Waldo figured they should target the really important computers first. He looked down at Dingus, frowned and rubbed his beard. “Our first stop – the University of Oslo,” he said.
After several wrong turns, they noticed a humming sound emanating from a locked enclosure nestled between the cadaver room and the chemical storage locker. Waldo was the one who picked the lock. “Jackpot!” he said. Inside he saw row after row of computers. Waldo immediately went to work checking out the AC system while Dingus danced a cha cha across the face of the computers.
“Look at this,” said Dingus. "It’s Macafee’s message coming over the wires. Check it out. Macafee’s a genius.”
“Waldo pretended not to hear.”
“Too bad we can’t monkey with the computers,” Dingus complained. I’d give it an undo tweak - make it reverse everything. Like this,” said Dingus. And he poked and prodded the keys. “Change A’s to F’s turn 'off' to 'on'". He began to sing and jump along the keyboard. "Backwards is forwards, left is right."
“Leave it alone,” said Waldo. "Let’s just turn off the AC and get out of here.”
“We ought to be making the AC stick on instead of turning it off,” said Dingus.
Waldo smacked his forehead. “And you pick now to tell me this. We could have been jamming ACs to 'on' all this time instead of turning them off. Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“You didn’t ask me.”
“From now on, just follow directions and don’t say anything. I’ll do the thinking for both of us.” Waldo threw back his shoulders and stroked his mustache as he gave the order.
But Dingus was so fascinated by the computers that he didn’t even hear Waldo. “Hey, get a load of this. Look at what I did. Now the computer’s sending a different e-mail from Santa. Listen to this: “The woods are dark and…”
“Shut up and get busy. Do I have to do all the work around here?”
“But look at what I did. Macafee’s message…”
“Macafee frosts my pancakes. I don’t want to hear about it. That’s all I’ve heard for the last month – Macafee did this. Macafee did that. Macafee’s the greatest gremlin that ever lived. I’ve had it up to here.”
While Waldo jammed up the AC, Dingus lovingly stroked the keyboards making the keys dance in time to the William Tell Overture. Things might have gone so differently if Waldo had listened. But then, Waldo never did understand computers, so it might not have made any difference anyway.
Mrs. Boonstople heard Santa’s apology on television. Santa told the children that he still loved them and to ignore any e-mails from him. Well, Mrs. B. didn’t want Suzy to be disappointed, so she checked her e-mail, planning to erase anything discouraging. But Santa’s e-mail was anything but discouraging.
“Christmas is coming
So is the snow.
You’ll all get your presents.
Ho ho ho ho!”
‘What a lovely gesture,’ thought Mrs. Boonstople. “Suzy, come see Santa’s e-mail.” Suzy giggled and squirmed. I hope he brings me a computer game,” she said.
On Christmas Eve, Santa readied his reindeer for their midnight ride, then walked to his workshop, head down, expecting the worst. But maybe there was something to salvage out of all the malfunction, something that the computers hadn’t destroyer. So imagine his surprise finding his workshop filled to the brim with his best toys yet. The elves loaded up Santa’s sleigh lickety split, and Santa took off with the heartiest “ho ho” he’d laughed in a long very time.
On December 26th, news of the Great Christmas Fiasco (as it was later known) was making its way through Gremlin Hall. Two Christmases in a row, Macafee had failed, failed, failed! Standing on the podium in front of all the gremlins, he was stripped of all decorations, and as a final blow his boots and socks were forcibly removed from his feet. A new head gremlin was to be appointed to take Macafee’s place. All the gremlins muttered and whispered among themselves, wondering who it could be.
Waldo wasn’t wondering. He was sure he’d be elected. Clearly he was the only gremlin who succeeded in his assignment. The University of Oslo was giving out diplomas in dog catching, sausage manufacturing, and on-line potty training – all thanks to him and Dingus.
Any second now, the voice of the Grand Gombah of gremlins would be broadcasted over the loud speakers announcing Macafee’s replacement. The gremlins were beside themselves in anticipation. “The new head gremlin is….” Here, a drum roll boomed throughout the building, rattling windows and shaking the chimney dust loose. “The new head gremlin is Dingus - for accomplishments of mayhem and confusion at the University of Oslo. With a special commendation to Waldo for his help in Operation Oslo.” Gremlin Hall shook with excitement. Along with the commendation, Waldo is hereby promoted to executive assistant to head gremlin Dingus.
Waldo looked about for an icicle to bang with his head.
All over the world, diapers were leaking – in joyous salute to Dingus.

Merry Christmas!

Elaine Glimme