Your Own Worst Enemy
A Factory Showroom song about the brain turning inward
I’m writing an essay about every They Might Be Giants song.
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I never bought my high school yearbook.
Somewhere out there, someone from my graduating class owns this mythical hardcover artifact containing an awkward senior headshot of me. Frozen forever in late-90s lighting, a classic Caesar haircut, and a slyly raised eyebrow. Beneath that photo is a quote I chose at eighteen:
“Precious and few are the moments that you and your own worst enemy share.”
That line comes from Your Own Worst Enemy, a song by They Might Be Giants, from their 1996 album Factory Showroom.
As far back as eighteen years old, I already sensed that the person most likely to hurt me was me.
The Early Warning System
I’ve always carried a long-standing affliction of pessimism. Negative thoughts about myself (or about what might go wrong) have always arrived uninvited. For a long time, I thought of this as a feature rather than a flaw: an early warning system scanning for threats, emotional or otherwise.
At first, I think it was useful. It was a survival mechanism.
Over time, it got better. Sharper and louder.
Every new hurt became data. Each disappointment fine-tuned the defenses of Future Me. If I could anticipate pain early enough, maybe I could avoid it altogether.
Eventually, I became very good at this. Too good.
Learning the Wrong Lesson Early
The first time I was dumped by a girlfriend, the relationship had barely begun. Maybe a month. One afternoon after lunch, as we walked toward our portable classrooms, she pulled me aside, away from our friends, and ended both the relationship and the friendship in one clean motion.
It didn’t just hurt. It informed me.
I learned that vulnerability led to pain. And once I understood that truth, any future hurt would be my own fault. I had allowed it. I should have known better.
That lesson stuck.
Longtime readers already know about the girlfriend who broke up with me shortly after my mom gave her a tarot card reading and predicted that a “new, better guy” was coming. Later, she met a new hire at her job. The prophecy fulfilled itself.
By then, Factory Showroom had already been released. When I listened to Your Own Worst Enemy after that breakup, I thought back to that day after lunch and the quiet humiliation of being discarded twenty feet from everyone I knew.
The song didn’t exaggerate the feeling. It named it.
Doing It to Myself (Again)
By the end of my junior year, that breakup was behind me. In its place was a casual, almost-something with a senior named Jenny. She was heading to college in Central Washington at the end of the summer and I caught feelings anyway.
Somewhere between holding hands and avoiding the real conversation, she finally said the part we’d both been dodging:
Where is this going?
She was moving away. She didn’t want to complicate things.
It was fair. It was reasonable.
And it still wrecked me.
I had done it again. I’d let my guard down, knowing the likely outcome. Standing there afterward, I didn’t feel unlucky. I just felt irresponsible.
I was my own worst enemy.
What the Song Is Actually Saying
Your Own Worst Enemy sounds small and contained for a reason. The percussion comes from a tiny Yamaha sound module that John Linnell had not pulled out for a recording since the very early days of the bad. The bass line is a plucked cello. There’s no swagger here, no big emotional release; just a percussion made up blips and beeps.
The lyrics make one devastating move: they divide the self.
One part of the mind rings the bell. Another part pretends nobody’s home. Both parts are you.
When the chorus reaches that line I mentioned earlier, “Precious and few are the moments that you and your own worst enemy share,” it sounds sentimental until you realize it’s a cruel joke. Those moments aren’t peace. They’re surrender.
The second verse drops the mask completely:
Full bottle in front of me / Time to roll up my sleeves / And get to work
Drinking isn’t indulgence here. It’s labor. Methodical. Purposeful. Anyone who’s been there recognizes it instantly.
December 29, 2025
It was the Saturday after Christmas. I was standing in the shower, planning to make breakfast and finally write this post.
The year had been heavy: a business merger, job uncertainty, a wife who left suddenly, adult kids who needed extra guidance, a future I couldn’t stop interrogating. The heat in my building was out due to a broken boiler. My brain never stopped scanning for what might go wrong next.
Then something inside my head went supernova.
A small blood vessel near my brain stem exploded—likely due to hypertension made worse by prolonged stress. I spent nine days in the hospital and learned, very quickly, that there is almost nothing worth worrying about enough to rupture your own brain.
That was the moment the song finally made sense.
Sharing the Room
Precious and few are the moments that you and your own worst enemy share.
In that hospital bed, I shared space with mine. Not metaphorically. Literally. And for the first time, I stopped pretending no one was home.
I didn’t leave with a cure or a victory. I left with a truce.
A quiet agreement to stop ringing the doorbell so hard.
To stop hurting myself first through pretending to save myself.
To let Future Me rest.
So far, it’s holding.
You’re reading one of my Factory Showroom essays. An album full of oddball beauty, quiet heartbreak, and some of the band’s most elegant songwriting. Writing through this era has felt like excavating older memories with sharper tools.
See all Factory Showroom posts
Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)
Holy shit. I'm glad you're on the mend!
Powerful piece, Chase. I'm glad you're home and hopefully recovering, if not recovered. It's no longer a metaphor when your brain literally hemorrhages during a time of heavy stress. A truce is certainly better than continued warfare. Here's to hoping that the truce will turn into lasting peace.
The "precious and few" line is a reference to the song "Precious and Few" by the early 1970s band Climax. The song's lyrics are: "Precious and few are the moments we two can share." It's a love song, and TMBG takes that message and turns it in on itself. It's powerful and dark. It's not done as a joke, but maybe a little it is.
It's kind of confusing, but there was the British Climax Blues Band that eventually changed their name to Climax, then another band in the U.S. called Climax Chicago Blues Band that then dropped the Chicago to avoid confusion with the band Chicago...I might have some of that wrong, but I was reading all about it, and my takeaway is that bands in the '70s really were obsessed with climaxing.