Another Self

My three best friends and I were inseparable growing up. Everywhere I went, they went. I can hardly think of a single adventure I had as a small child without these three friends in tow. We each had our own personalities that blended seamlessly to make an unstoppable team. Martin was the oldest and took care of the rest of us. Dave was my age and was constantly getting into and creating all kinds of trouble. John was the baby of the group, and followed us blindly into every crazy adventure. And I was the fearless leader, for good or ill.

Martin, Dave and John were, hands down, my best friends growing up, and it didn't bother me at all that I was the only person who could see them.

Don't get me wrong, I had plenty of friends whom I had not invented, but that did not make them any more or less "real" than Martin, Dave and John. The thing about these so-called imaginary friends is that they were the perfect reflection of those qualities in myself that I would grow up looking for in my future "real life" friends. Imaginary friends and make-believe worlds are not harbingers of some dormant mental instability. They are a promise that, perhaps, one day we might meet someone new or travel to a new place and recognize a little bit of ourselves in the experience.