Remember how I was talking about my overactive imagination about a week ago? I had a conversation with Prairie yesterday that reminded me of a couple of perfect examples of this.
The freakin’ Muppets used to give me nightmares. How sad is that?
There are two specific Muppet-related nightmares that I remember clearly. And I do mean clearly — they don’t scare me anymore, but the memories are vivid enough (especially for someone who generally doesn’t remember their dreams) that I know they were pretty traumatizing at the time.
I don’t know if the first was based upon any specific Muppet episode or not. All I do remember is walking through my house at night, with huge — and by huge, I mean the size of large dogs — fuzzy Muppet spiders crawling out of hampers, through doors, over windowsills, and generally throughout the house, trying to get me.
The second is, in retrospect, the more amusing of the two. One of the recurring skits on the Muppet Show was a newscaster reading some bizarre bit of news, after which he’d invariably fall victim to whatever gag he was setting up. In one particular skit, the news item was about strange cases of household furniture suddenly coming alive and attacking people. Of course, after reading the news flash, suddenly his desk opened its eyes, the drawer slid open like a mouth, and it chased him off set.
For months after that, I’d have nightmares of being chased around the house by furniture with big googley Muppet eyes and foam teeth.
It’s funny now. But at that point?
Muppets were scary!
“Long Time” by Clumsy Lovers, The from the album Barnburner (1999, 3:31).