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I woke up this morning from a weird and unsettling dream. In the dream, my children were obsessed with non-linear, psychedelic public television shows featuring genderless aliens with cheap felt-board material for skin.
These characters had a language of unintelligible noises, lived in spaceships, rode scooters, ate toast, and abused their vacuum cleaner. The fatter of the species—who looked to be from the same lineage as the McDonaldland character Grimace—enslaved an extended multiracial human family and forced them to dramatize simplistic scenes for their own amusement.
I recall other oddities: a disembodied baby’s head, quarantined rabbits, and a lady saying “time for tubby bye-bye” over a Kmart public address system. Was this just my subconscious mind telling me I was taking excessively long showers?
I know it was a dream. What sane or sober TV producer would create such oddball, dream-like shows for children? And who would green-light it here in America, home of the hit-you-over-the-head sitcom?
I chalked it up to the gratuitous amount of salsa I consumed last night—until I stumbled upon the fully documented truth on Wikipedia (Did you know Grimace’s grandma was actually named Winky?). As if someone slapped me in the face with a pink handbag, it all came roaring back: Teletubbies, Boohbah, and perhaps the most bizarre alternate reality show of them all, Big Comfy Couch. (I still have nightmares of Major Bedhead stealing my mail.)
I had experienced these strangely hypnotic shows alongside my children, but my grown-up mind just couldn’t handle it and I buried the memories deep in my psyche. Talking aardvarks is about as far as I’ll go.
Maybe that’s why those shows eventually went the way of the dinosaur. After all, what good is a kids’ TV program without an aware parent compelled to plunk down money for related merchandise?
But what a short, strange trip it was.
