Friday Night Question: Imaginary Friends

[minoanmiss]

So I asked my friends for some questions, and julian asked me about my childhood imaginary friends. This story features some actual good parenting on my parents' part!

My parents took em to see Peter Pan when I was 4. I brought Tinkerbell home with me. To hear my father tell it, Tinkerbell encouraged me to be naughtier than usual, so he told me to go catch her in my hands, walked me outside, and had me open my hands and let her go.

The nature of memory being what it is, these are the components I currently remember: seeing Peter Pan; loving/imagining/dreaming about Tinkerbell; my father telling this story when I was in my late single digits. But what I don't remember is any grief coming from seeing Peter Pan, so my father probably did this pretty gently, and my mother let him. Go them!

(My father wasn't the gentle one with me. Neither of them was the gentle one. So this story is kind of noteworthy for what it lacks. )

Of course, one of the reasons I posted this is that I'd love to hear about your/your kids' imaginary friends, if you want to tell me.

Comments

[potofsoup]

Rutabaga has an imaginary older brother who lives in his own green house next to hers (which is a yellow house), and both of these houses are reachable by flying in a yellow airplane. He is 10 years old and has traffic lights in his house.

[minoanmiss]

He sounds like a charming young sir! Have you drawn him?

[tibicina]

My parents named by little brother after my imaginary friend which explained why years later I could remember all kinds of stuff about said imaginary friend, but I could not, for the life of me, remember his name. And then we were talking with someone else at one point and my father said that and I was like 'wait?! That's why I couldn't remember his name! You coopted it for my little brother!'

(I mean, to be fair, I think the name in question had been on the short list for me if I were a boy, but still.)

[minoanmiss]

That is really cute and yet kind of weird -- they coopted the name you chose! I guess that means you and they share a sense of taste. :)

[gingicat]

Would you describe J's muttered imaginings as imaginary friends? He has never contradicted me when I characterize them as working things out verbally.

[minoanmiss]

I think they overlap with both imaginary friends and characters. He's telling himself stories, basically (something I have also done a lot throughout my life)

[sabotabby]

I'm sure I had imaginary friends, but it's a weird blank spot in my memory. Maybe they all just became characters.

[minoanmiss]

As I noted to Gingicat, there's a lot of overlap.

[julian]

Awh. (Good memories are good.)

Alternate Reality Filkers

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

I tend to not recognize them as imaginary, and I sometimes channel lyrics from them and post the lyrics as from them: Palman Lapgan, Septus W. Rhode (long dead, but still sending lyrics), Howard Phillips (also long dead, but still filking), P. J. Lis'ner and Mary Malachi. Did I mention The unPaul, who is not your average smiley face?

Ann O., Speaker to ARFs

Re: Alternate Reality Filkers

[minoanmiss]

*beams at you a lot*

[lb_lee]

As very small kids, we had this elaborate world of anthropomorphic dogs called Dog World, and would verbally recite stories to ourself about them in the yard. The only contemporaneous record remaining is some stray reference our old man makes to it in one of our kindergarten parent teacher conference cards.

The only one of the stories we remember now in any detail is the main character going on an adventure with her grandfather's (non-anthropomorphic) horse and donkey to track down Santa Claus.

[cellio]

Wow, good parenting on your parents' part -- had to click through! (Well, I would have anyway, but, you know... the chance to see something so unusual is extra incentive!)

I don't remember having imaginary friends. I had tons of stuffed animals/dolls/other toys to which I ascribed detailed, sometimes-complex histories and relationships and stuff, but that feels a little different -- I knew that was fiction, and I was inventing stories every time I played with them.

[vettecat]

Nice story! I used to have an imaginary cat. I also had a real cat, and I was sure they played together when nobody was looking.