Imaginary Friends
Have you ever had an
imaginary friend? Or sat and watched children talking and playing with
imaginary friends? I watched my daughter do this all the time when she was
little. Once I sat in my mother-in-law’s den and watched my daughter through
the back window playing alone outside. She was only about three years old at
the time. This was back in the early seventies when I was still running around
looking something like one of the Beatles with long hair and a beard…back in my
hippie days. Anyway, my daughter was sitting in the shade of a pine tree on a
picnic table and looking up into the branches having a conversation. I could
hear her talking and laughing, but I couldn’t quite make out what she was
saying. After a while, I went out there and sat with her on the table. I told
her that I had seen her talking to someone and asked who it was. I wasn’t
surprised by her behavior because, like I said, she often entertained imaginary
guests and even invisible cats. But what surprised me this time is when she
told me she had been talking to Jesus. Now I must confess I was pretty shocked
by this. At this point in my life I was very much a non-believer - in religion
anyway. Neither I nor my wife had ever talked about Jesus around her. I know my
mother-in-law may have brought it up a time or two, but I doubted her
mentioning it had made a very big impression on my daughter. I asked her how
she knew it was Jesus she was talking to. She just smiled and said, “Because he
had told me that’s who he was, silly.” I then asked her if it was Jesus she was
talking to, what did he look like. She thought about it a second and then
laughed and said, “He looks a whole lot like you.” “He looked like me?” I asked
surprised even more because I was pretty sure she had never seen a picture of
Jesus. “Yes, he had long hair and a beard, just like you, Daddy,” she told me
seriously. Then I asked her if he was still up there in the tree. She looked up
and said a little sadly, “No, he left when you came out.” Then she just started
chatting away about something else altogether. I’ve never forgotten that day.
My daughter doesn’t remember it, of course; after all she was only three at the
time. But when I think about it, I’m still not quite sure what to believe. I
knew my child had an overactive imagination (I wonder where she got that from?)
so I was not ready to take it too seriously.
I’ve been accused of
having imaginary friends of my own by my kids and grandkids because they say I
don’t have any real ones – at least none that they’ve ever met. And I have to
admit I even made up several of them on facebook at one time to be my “friends”
on Farmville and Battle Pirates. I got in big trouble for using my wife’s
picture on the profile of one of those imaginary friends. I’m now banned from
mentioning her name or posting her picture anywhere on the internet. These
days, I have some very good and vivid imaginary friends named Trevor, Harella,
Sarah, and Amir to mention only a few. They spend a lot of time with me almost
every day. And sometimes I’m not so sure they are entirely imaginary. They
certainly seem real to me now. I even know intimate details about their
personal lives. By that standard, they are closer friends than anyone else I
know. You would probably like them too, if you get to know them better. You can
do that by reading the two books at the top of this blog.
So was my daughter
really talking to Jesus, or was he just another one of her imaginary friends?
Who am I to say at this point? Do you have imaginary friends? If you tell me
you talk to Jesus or your dead grandmother on a daily basis, I promise I won’t
be the one laughing at you. I wouldn’t want to insult your friends that way. Or
you. After all, in my world, sometimes my imaginary friends are much more fun
to be with than the real ones. The only imaginary friends I have a problem with
are the ones I end up killing off. They tend to get upset about that and hold a
grudge. But most of all, I’m here to tell you that friends are a good thing to
have, no matter where you find them, even if they happen to be sitting up in
the branches of a pine tree on a beautiful sunny day.
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