Today on Facebook:
Cel’s Status – Me: When I was your age, the househelp couldn’t iron our clothes. Nina: Why? Me: Because I forced them to play cards with me! Nina: Tita! You should have played with your imaginary friends! @_@
Kids say the darndest things.
I never had an imaginary friend, though. Oh, I had a very fertile imagination, all right, but I usually just pretended to be something else, like a fairy or a princess, or maybe talk to my dolls or a pet stick or even hold imaginary conversations out loud, but I never went to the extent of conjuring up a completely imaginary person, like someone with a name whom I interacted with on a routine. Not even when I was always left by myself while waiting to be fetched from school. I decided to use this forced alone time to read instead.
This reminds me of the book Sundays at Tiffany’s by James Patterson. The story is about a little girl, Jane, whose only friend is an imaginary one named Michael. Unfortunately for her, the rule is that he must leave her when she turns nine. “Children have imaginary friends to help guide them into their lives. We help children feel less alone, help them find their place in the world, in their families. But then we have to leave. Once I leave, you won’t even remember me, sweetheart. No one ever does.” That’s what he tells her. But she does remember him. And more than twenty years later, they are thrown into each other’s paths again, and Jane wonders if this time around, he will stay for good.
It’s actually a cute concept, the idea of imaginary friends not being imaginary at all, but some sort of angels that help children. It’s not extraordinary literature, but it’s a nice feel-good rom com read. Something that will make you start thinking, what if that imaginary friend of mine was real after all?
This may seem weird but a part of me is wishing that I had made up an imaginary friend when I was a child. It’s like I somehow missed out on all the fun or something.
