[Professional Blog] Cartoon bus driver terrorizes reluctant grown-up

Be afraid. Very very very afraid. The GiggleBellies are coming!

Right now, this might not make your spine tingle as much as the Mayan predictions for this December - i.e. doomsday - but it will.

Trust me, because just like you had (or still have) Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" on continuous loop for months, my two-year-old has been playing the different versions of "Wheels on the Bus" on YouTube over and over for six months (although at times it feels like 60 million years).

And this is where the GiggleBellies come in.

They do the best version of "Wheels on the Bus."

It has a rockin' uptempo guitar strum and David Lee Roth-like vocals, plus the graphics are quite colourful with purples and yellows.

But one of cartoon characters now scares me - since it recently ate my family, my co-workers, a number of celebrities and Brad Cabana in the scariest of nightmares.

In the bad dream, there was little defense against the GiggleBelly that drives the bus. It looks a lot like a freaky frog that spent too much time around St. John's harbour.

No matter where people were standing - on the ground or any kind of floor, including industrial strength tile - the creature would just pop up out of nowhere and eat the person in one gulp regardless of their size.

You try woofing down a man the size of sports editor Robin Short in a single bite!

For a while the dream wasn't going so badly because I was playing a Bruce Willis-Die Hard-type of action hero.

I figured out a way to thwart attacks by playing other versions of "Wheels on the Bus," including, sadly, Barney's.

But then a video of some British youngsters singing the boy's favourite song buffered, and as the wheel on the browser went round and round, the darn GiggleBelly attacked.

It eventually ate everyone else but me.

I was freaked and fighting to stay alive. To do so, I found myself standing on our treadmill's control console, brandishing a hakapik and waiting to attack. (For God's sakes, don't tell the animal rights folks!)

Tragically, the thing morphed into conjoined GiggleBelly frogs, and broke through my basement floor at two angles.

As it was about to eat me like a bacon-wrapped scallop, I awoke upset, with my heart thumping and sweat bubbling out of me like broken water main.

It was about four in the morning.

Within seconds I realized it was a dream, but I was too worked up to get back to sleep.

I told my wife what happened the next morning.

She rolled her eyes, and suggested grown men don't have bad dreams.

We actually do, but we only admit when we can use it to our advantage, like for a column topic or saving the human race.

Please beware of the ground and floor beneath you.

Steve Bartllett can sing more versions of "Wheels on the Bus" than you. If 100 people email him and tell him what the babies on the bus say, he'll record it a medley that includes some falsetto, and post it online. Email him at sbartlett@thetelegram.com or follow him on Twitter at bartlett_steve.