Try this:
In the middle of a conversation with a friend, a romantic partner, on a first date, at a business lunch…
Ask the following question:
“What was the name of your childhood imaginary friend?”
The response will be immediate.
(That is – if the person had imaginary friends. If not, he or she will look at you like you’re a moron.)
I just tested this theory. As I was writing just now, my assistant came to the front door to pick something up. I opened the door and the first thing out of my mouth was:
“What was the name of your imaginary friend?”
Without batting an eye, she said, “Sarah.”
I had two imaginary friends. Connie and Chottie.
Connie and Chottie were always with me. My whole family still remembers them. They helped me in my attempt to dig a hole to China in my backyard, among other things. In my mind’s eye, they look a lot like the two little girls in the Charlie Brown Christmas special who dance with their hair swinging across their face as they lean from side to side.
So, this is today’s question:
Who was your imaginary friend?
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{ 76 comments… read them below or add one }
Didn’t have an imaginary friend, had an imaginary audience, for whom I declaimed, played piano, recited poetry, and sang. The audience usually put up with it, but would sometimes tell me I needed more practice.
Always wanted an imaginary friend and would sometimes make one up, but they always lacked verisimilitude and faded quickly. I still talk to my imaginary audience, and it is there when I write or play at my guitar, or even when I photograph. Does that make me odd?
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John.
I was always reluctant to talk about him because the adults laughed when I did and asked me questions about him.
What is interesting is that years later I learned that the Saint whose “feastday” is on my birthday is named John.
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She never told me her name – seriously! But she came with an English sheepdog. My mother claims that I would insist on her having a place at the dinner table and I remember telling the dog to sit & hide under my chair because my parents didn’t like animals at the table. When we moved to the United States, I invited them to join us, but she said, she couldn’t come along w/ us and they both stayed behind.
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Had two: Cowboy and Indian. I seem to recall the 3 of us spent a lot of time under the big oak dining table, hidden from the world by the tablecloth. We also spent the better part of a summer digging a hole to China. Never made it, but found a lot of fossils — this was in dinosaur country in southern Alberta)– that ignited my life-long love of history.
That was the summer my friend Joey and I built a helicopter in his back yard out of old lumber, a tractor tire and a (non-working) lawnmower engine. It was coming along fine to the point we tried to put up the rotors (made of 2x4s as I recall) — wind caught them, the whole thing tipped and cracked me across the forehead & I wound up with eleventy hundred stitches and a black eye. Loved those days . . .
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Cindy Brady (yes, as in the tv show). Jan Brady used to live with us, too, but Cindy and I kicked her out b/c she “got too annoying”. Yes, I realize there are a startling number of psychological issues in that situation. Despite what it may sound like, I was actually a pretty well-adjusted kid. I’ll admit, however, that I soured on more than one real-life roommate in my adulthood when they “got too annoying”…
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Mine were a Fox, a Condor and a Wallaby – no names, but very active, to the point of going to school with me. I had Fox Tunnels in the salal jungle, & a cardboard floored den. My German Shepherd (150 lbs.)crawled along with me & my other companion, a mallard duck decoy with dog chewed bill. (This replaced a retired wooden decoy that had belonged to my Grandfather and with which I slept..) When we moved to the British Columbia “bush” the Condor came, along with the duck and dog, of course. Condor vanished when I discovered the salt chuck!
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Interesting topic Christine.
I had a whole life story plotted out. I was Sam (Samantha) and had a twin sister called Amanda. We were from a family of 12 girls and our dad was the pirate Sandokan (the tiger of Malaysia series – I must have had a crush on him). Since he could not take care of 12 girls we were all sent to live somewhere else and would from time to time go back to Malaysia on holidays and have pirate-like adventures. I would sometimes also pretend to be living in a boarding school (being a huge fan of Enid Blyton’s books) but always as Sam and with my twin Amanda. I loved these names then (can’t stand them now as they sound very cotton candy to me).
Thanks for making me remember this. I still see myself acting out all the scenes
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A horse, of unknown gender, whom I named “Blueberry” (no reason why; I just thought it was a good name for a horse). The horse went with me everywhere, and could run as fast as our car, and for as long as it needed to. For the record, the horse never spoke or anything of that sort (a horse is a horse, of course, of course, and no one can talk to a horse, of course, heheh).
Many years after I sort of lost contact with Blueberry, we were reunited in a rather strange and highly personal mystical experience. I’m told by those who know these things that this is a “totem spirit”.
For what it’s worth, Blueberry is still of unknown gender but my personal “vision” of the horse is much clearer now. It’s a chestnut Mustang with a white blaze face.
When I relate that story, I sound like a bit of a kook, but, hey, it wouldn’t be the first time people thought I was an eccentric, so I figured I may as well share it.
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I was my own invisible friend. I had an entire alternative life in another universe in a different dimension. This included a happy family, wonderful friends, amazing horses and other animals, and many adventures zooming about in outer space. I wrote stories and drew pictures to illustrate them. It all seems rather silly now, but growing up I felt so alienated from my actual family that being from another planet seemed the most logical explanation.
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Kimmie.
She hid behind the refrigerator once and when my dad came home from work he helped me try to get her out. I don’t think she ever told me why she went back there!
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I don’t recall having a traditional imaginary friend, but I did have stuffed animals that I talked to and even interviewed. One in particular, Honey Bear, was sort of a security blanket in a way. I talked to him, and I think he had a whole life I invented for him, but I can’t really remember any details of it.
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Charlie and his dog, Snickers. Charlie wore old-fashion overalls and a blue shirt and had shaggy dark blond hair. Snickers was a border collie. We got into all sorts of trouble at home and school! They also went to all my many doctors appointments with me and stayed with me in the hospital for my first surgery. Snickers used to nip at the doctors and nurses feet when they’d do something that hurt…I’d forgotten that. Funny! Good ole Charlie and Snickers
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she didn’t really have a name, but i remember talking to her often as a child, describing the clouds, people and other stuff, explaining as if i knew all things under the sun.
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These are so cute! I keep smiling!
Jer – i talked with my stuffed animals too. I had “meetings” in my bed at night and I’d line them up and talk to them all. (It was my first audience.)
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Dowgan. So funny that you brought this up — I just had to come up with some new passwords, and one of the ones that I considered was Dowgan because I knew I would never forget it!
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Walter – It might make you odd, but I’m right there with you. I had an imaginary audience (but no imaginary friend) too.
I also frequently got interviewed by whichever afternoon talk-show person was my mother’s favorite at the time.
As for still talking to them, well…let’s just say that I’m ready for Oprah whenever she asks me.
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ok, i’m almost embarrassed to type this as my sister made a mockery of it in my adulthood (sigh) but i think it was quite creative! it was an orange pair of pants that i carried around everywhere and i called him (?) “pants friend”. oh boy, if i were in therapy this would be a great topic to explore!
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Didn’t have one – I’m an only child, loved and still love my own solitude and company, and was iffy about other friends being around all the time (and taking up my time and solitude). Didn’t want one!
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the one i can recall, her name was elizabeth…saw her in a window for the first time when i was in grade school.
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Holy crow, I’m just gonna co-sign to Walter Hawn’s comment, because that was always/still is me TO A T. Greetings to my soul siblings Walter and R.M. Koske!
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Okay, I confess, I frequently had an imaginary audience and was interviewed by imaginary talk show hosts, but that was when I was older. I never considered them to be “friends”. And while I’m confessing, I still sometimes use an imaginary audience of some sort or an imaginary interviewer for certain kinds of positive visualisations.
The difference is that I always knew (and know!) that these were/are imaginary. With my horse, I never felt like I imagined it (though I did know it wasn’t a literally manifested and material horse). I always felt like it came to me to be my friend. Still do.
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I had 16 girls and 16 boys and I was Cinderella (at the ball, of course). I remember talking to my parents about them and taking them to bed with me at night. Now my life is full of my flute students (I didn’t have my own kids) and I’ve got many more than 16 girls and a handful of boys that I work with all the time. It’s amusing how that’s worked out!
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Frenchy the Sam and Markie. Both male, I think.. I picture them now as cartoon characters.. And honestly, now that I think about it, I only picture one person. I wonder if I didn’t quite get that having two names implied two people.
Anyway, I also just realized, in trying to describe Frenchy the Sam, that my mental picture is essentially a friendly version of Yosemite Sam. Huh!
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I never had one. When I learned that there were such things, I still couldn’t conjur one up! Reading your post and all of these comments gave me a chuckle–I think I just got some of my childhood back! Thanks to you all for sharing!
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Ever since I got interested in music I remember having an imaginary audience that I taunted from an imaginary stage. I was doing the whole For-those-about-to-rock-we-salute-you thing. It was always a rock show. It always kicked ass and no one in the band ever screwed anything up. This was of course preceded by giving imaginary interviews, signing imaginary autographs, doing imaginary meet&greets, sleeping on imaginary tour buses and having imaginary rehearsals.
Now that I think about it, I had my whole life played out inside my head. This was I guess a natural kind of visualisation process or an imaginary vision board inside my head. The funny thing is, this is just now starting to unfold in reality, and that’s I suppose, because I was stubborn enough to keep at it and never stop that visualisation. I never let that vision go.
What I do now is imagine the last five minutes before hitting the stage, that getting-psyched-up process. There’s a camera crew filming a DVD and I’m jumping around like a mad-man on the loose. So it’s still going on. It never left me.
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I had an imaginary puppy named Brownie. Tee hee…. It began with visiting a store when I was 5, where there were free puppies looking for homes. I wanted one sooooo badly, but couldn’t have one. But that didn’t stop me… I pretended I brought one home, and even went as far as telling my class all about my new puppy during show and tell. It made for a pretty interesting parent-teacher conference later on!
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Allison.
My parents had to open a car door for her, get a chair at the table, and so on.
Hadn’t thought about that in quite some time. Thanks Christine!
All the best!
deb
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I had an imaginary puppy too – that I used to walk to school and home again (cuz I wasn’t allowed to take my real dog to school all day!)
She was called Dill (both real and imaginary)!
I also used to have an imaginary rabbit too (cuz I wasn’t allowed one!) I made the cage out of a box and used saw dust from my dad’s workshop and everything!(I was very little – honest!)
Yep… I used to have meetings with all my soft toys too. I guess this was like preparing for my first ever team meeting. I used to sleep with a whole row of them leaving very little room for me in the bed!
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P.s. I still miss Dill – black labrador (the real one – cuz I still have the imaginary one!
)
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Polly.
She was my imaginary twin sister, and she was very glamorous. I never told anyone about her. Until now
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As I said in Tucson, mine were Ding and Brownie. Ding was female and looked scarily like the queen in a deck of cards, lol, and Brownie was male and was more like a cartoon from the Peanuts characters. This is sooo funny
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This is very interesting timing…while I do not recall having an imaginary friend as a child, lately, as an adult, I have become very aware of little girl who talks to me a lot. (No, I am not experiencing psychosis!) I have named her and I try to listen to her as she holds my fears and anger. If ignored, fear and anger will hold your dreams like a vice. So I let her talk to me so together we can address those fears.
Kinda like an imaginary friend as an adult. But very real.
I wonder, do you have a little girl/boy who is trying to talk to you now?
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Linda, although not completely imaginary as she was my older sister who lived only three days after birth. We share the same middle name, although spelled differently, and from the first time I heard of her, I always felt she was there with me, and she was the one I’d talk to in my room late at night in secret commiseration or celebration over any number of things. As a younger child, I had a painted plaque on my bedroom wall of a young blonde girl in a clown costume, and for what ever reason I decided this was what she looked like. Over the years, my visualization of her has changed, as she’s grown with me, but it’s still based on that little girl on the plaque, and Linda is still with me today, in celebration and commiseration!
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Wow. These are really cool. (Lori – you made my eyes fill with tears.)
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My imaginary friends were the counterparts of my real-life school friends, only they always liked me and thought I was cool and pretty, and we always did fun things like pose in fashion-magazine and catalog shoots and star in movies. (I even designed the pages and ads!) I called them my IRL friends’ middle names (although my imaginary name was the one I always wanted for my own: Elizabeth), and the imaginary friends had their own counterparts in my Barbie dolls. It seems really weird to write about all of this.
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Somehow I never had an imaginary friend, but I knew others who did, so I’ve never had a problem with the concept. Me, I had George, a well-worn and well-loved stuffed cat with red velveteen paws and ears that used to have sparklies on them, but over the years I picked off all the sparklies. George went -everywhere- with me, if Mom would allow it. I had lots of other stuffed animals, too, but George was the best, and is the only one I still remember from when I was little.
I do still collect and keep stuffed animals. There are two I have now that are almost as special to me as George was. Bonky is the white Gund teddy bear that my husband gave me our first Christmas together. And Bear is the teddy bear that my Dad gave me on my 18th birthday. Dad always gave very practical gifts when I was growing up — a winter jacket every other year, sweaters, stuff like that. The year I turned 18, he had ordered bedroom sheet sets to give to my cousins for Christmas, and they came with a free teddy bear. I have 2 cousins, and there was only 1 bear, so Dad couldn’t just include the bear with the sheets. As he was puzzling out what to do with it, Mom said, “Give it to Faith for her birthday.” Dad protested — she’s 18, it’s just a toy, she’s outgrown that sort of thing, etc. etc. Mom just said, “Trust me, give it to her.” Dad had learned over the years that it paid to listen to Mom, so he wrapped it up and gave it to me. And to this day, it is my favorite gift ever from him. Bear’s companionship got me through the long nights of my first semester at college when I was homesick. He got me through the long weeks of my coop job a full day’s drive from my fiance. And he’s still wonderful to have around on nights of wild storms if my husband’s traveling…
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I didn’t have an imaginary friend and thought I must be defective or something. All my friends had them. My mother seemed surprised, maybe even disappointed, that I didn’t have a cute make-believe friend. Since it seemed to be an essential part of childhood, I tried pretending that I had an imaginary friend for awhile in “fake it till you make it” style, but it never became the effortless relationship that my friends had with their imaginary companions. It seemed more like a pain in the butt, actually, always having to remember that an invisible person tagged along with me, watching my every move.
I did have an irrational fear of the Sesame Street Aliens, though, and Mork and Mindy. I’d have nightmares and worries of them spontaneously appearing. Hmm. Kind of the opposite of an imaginary friend.
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I never had an imaginary *friend* so to speak but invented monsters who lived under our beds that spoke but only I could hear them to amuse my sisters. However, I have ALWAYS talked to my stuffed animals. In fact I still do. I have invented little personalities for all of them and they “talk” to us – they tell us their names, David tells me what Artie the Wonder Dog liked about something in the comics, I tell him what Poppy is mad about (usually that I won’t set an alarm in the morning – he’s very regimented) and on and on. Imagination is the spice of life. My imagination is so vivid that I am trying to see how to turn it into a source of income…..think UpLevel Your Life/Business?! I have already written five of my stories about our guys down and more are swimming in my head. They come pouring out at various times when I least expect it. More to come on my new Children’s Book career…..
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Like many who answered here I had alternative worlds and universes, filled with magic, unicorns, dragons and creatures both large and small. My world continued with me for many years and then I left it for a time (trying to grow up) lol.
Now my primary work is in the energy plane (or the imaginary world). So from my current perspective I no longer consider them imaginary. With the work I do with Angels, Spirit Guides and such I know these energies to be very real…they correspond with inner spiritual vision and when our clairvoyance is all the way open it actually projects into this world as a physical manifestation or siting.
Wow, creative types seem to be naturally gifted in clairvoyance! How very interesting!!!
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No friend, but I had a stuffed dog that I kept until the stuffing came out. His name was (ta-da) “Puppy”. He’s long gone, but was immortalized in a pastel painting my grandfather had done of me. I had to sit for it for 2 days and cried most of the time…but Puppy is on my lap in it! I was 5, but I remember it like it was yesterday….
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David just informed me that the guys that live in our house are mad I didn’t mention them all by name in the comment above … there are seven in the bed: the dogs are Arthur Winter Slush, Barley Jerome Guinness, Farley, and Beagley the Dobbster Beagley; the Bears are Brentford, Sandy Douglas, and Koalette. Manning the clock radio are Poppy the Bear and Princess Bunny (who he is in love with.) One of these guys comes with us on trips – they all fight for the honor. And up on the armoire are Chamonix the Lion (stage name Cleopatra), Monkey Monk, Koala (pronounced “cola”), Funky (ain’t no bird, ain’t no monkey, give me a hug, I’m a funky!), Brrrrrrdy,Nimnum and Nimnums cousins, Junior Birdman, Phoebe the Alpaca. In the living room are Hoopdeegoogle, Puff the Magic Dragon, and Dragonia. The bears downstairs at the Teddy Bear picnic include Egbert, Wilbear, Ted E. Cross, Jesterbear and Wolfgang who are all in love with Bonita.
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Buckles and HallyPally. Don’t ask me why…
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Gina, and she lived in the dogwood tree outside my window. I would totally freak my mother out by looking at her, talking with her and playing with her like she was real.
My sound had Mousey, my daughter has tons and an audience.
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None of mine ever had names… or genders… or consistent personalities. Heh. We’d play board games and ponies together all the time though. And had lots of interesting conversations.
I had unicorns that could run along side the car… They had to jump over all of the pavement though, they couldn’t stand to touch it. My parents still don’t know why I was so good on long car rides (I spent the time following where the unicorns were running, of course).
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Oh Christine, I think this is my new favorite post question! I love reading everyone’s replies. My “imaginary friends”, who I now believe to be actual spirits, were two young Indian girls named Inca & Oosa. I lived on a farm and had a horse, they would ride their painted ponies from a nearby town, then together we would ride and explore on my family’s farm. We found many arrowheads on that farm, it was once inhabited by a tribe known as “Moundbuilders”. Whenever I tell anyone about them, I can picture them so clearly & as I write this I can feel their presence. Also, the porch of our farmhouse was my stage to sing & dance for my adoring imaginary audiences (Inca & Oosa were otherwise engaged when those occured). I wrote a song about them, and am working on a children’s book.
Thanks for the opportunity for us all to share.
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My mother had an imaginary spider named Wallet. Grandpa used to tell us about the time Mom left Wallet at Nannie’s house and he had to drive 2 hours to go back and pick him up because my mom was so distraught.
My imaginary friends were my stuffed animals and dolls. I was a Nancy Drew in training and I’d sail them all to safety on my bed-boat. They were often captured by a shadowy Cruella DeVille type character and I’d have to smuggle them quietly away in the night. They were really noisy!
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Oh my gosh, what an awesomely fun post! Amy Tara was her name, and she lived in a pink polka dot house (that my mother and I never did find on our bicycle that day!), and had animals living under her bed. (I believe an elephant was in that mix.) Thanks for helping me remember this!
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Whew … so my dear daughter’s normal after all!!? LOL
I never had, but my sweet 9 year old was an only child for the first 6 yrs of her life.
She had a constant companion, called Kala (like ‘Carla’, but that’s how she spelt it). I can’t remember if she ever described her to me, but Kala & Kaityn spent MANY happy hours playing, exploring, reading etc etc together.
About 2 weeks ago, I asked her if she could remember the friend’s name. It was quite sad that both of us had forgotten it for a while!
I’m going home TONIGHT to ask her more about Kala, and document it in her scrapbook for her!!!
Thanks, guys, for sharing …
it’s awesome stuff!
ETA
BTW – I have a ‘voice’ that accompanies me. I believe it’s my guardian angel. But on a couple of occasions, I have been warned from danger with a very clear ‘He’s here!’ in my ear. Something I need to explore a little more, me thinks.
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I never had an imaginary friend but my imagination was truly my best friend !It still is !I guess that makes me my own best friend which sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it ?
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Kelly – she lived on Sesame Street when she wasn’t with me.
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