Nightmare on Sesame Street?

When I was very young, under four or five years old, I had a recurring nightmare that a chair in the den would strangle me with one of its legs. I couldn't breathe or call for help. One of the scariest aspects of the dream was that I could barely whisper, and so could not get the attention of my mother, just in the next room, to come and rescue me. The suffocation was very, very real.

We moved to a new house when I was four and took the chair with us. It is still in my parents house, and I still hate that chair.

I had other recurring drowning/suffocating dreams growing up, which I can now attribute to my terrible sleep apnea. While sleeping I was in fact suffocating, and incorporated that experience into the dreams.

But for all of my odd recurring dreams, or dreams with recurring themes, I never had a Sesame Street nightmare that I can recall.

Last week BoingBoing posted an oddity about S.A.M. the Sesame Street robot from the 1970s. This sparked a great deal of reader comment regarding the early Sesame Street content that terrorized and traumatized a generation of kids.

I vaguely remember the Carmen-singing orange, and the Ernie mummy, but neither freaked me out much. I do remember being a little disturbed when muppets would remove too much of their faces. Playing with Bert's nose was one thing, but completely removing the mouth and nose (and eyes) rather bothered me, but probably because of my experience of/fear of asphyxiation.

Particularly noted in this BoingBoing Sesame Street Fears roundup are the "yip yip" aliens. I never thought those guys were scary. I freaking loved those guys. In pre-first grade, Chet Frist and I would "yep yep yep"/"nope nope nope" all the time and think it was hilarious. I still pester him from time to time with a Sesame Street aliens YouTube clip.

Briiiing!