New Friends

In Kindergarten, my daughter didn’t have many friends at school.  She got along with everyone and was doing just fine, but she was beginning to notice that other people were finding “best” friends and that she wasn’t one of them.

We live a little out of the way of her school, so play dates are hard to arrange.  Kids are so busy these days anyway that finding a day that works with your own kid, let alone with someone else, is hard. Add in an extra 15-minute drive and you just don’t bother.

I wasn’t worried.  Best friends come and go at that age.  I didn’t have a best friend until second grade.  I thought we were the real thing.  I was called January (the month and the middle daughter from the Brady Bunch were the only “Jans” anyone in my class could relate to.  I didn’t want to be the whiney, forgotten middle sister, so I leapt at the month).  My friend predictably became known as February because we were always together and her last name started with an F.  We sat together at lunch, compared handwriting, admired one another’s troll collections and marched in the Bicentennial parade together.  But, by third grade, after a summer of mixing it up with other kids at the community pool, we had both moved on.  She moved in a much cooler direction, but that is another story.

So, I figured there would be plenty of time for my daughter to make friends.  The first week of first grade, she came home beaming that there were two new kids and they were both destined to be her best friend.  There was Andres from Mexico and Sarah, who looked just like her and liked all the same things.

Great – new blood.  I noticed that the revised class list didn’t include them, but there is so much going on at the start of the year, I figured we’d get a revised list soon.  Brett talked about them every day that first week.

I looked forward to meeting them at the back-to-school picnic.  All the new families got special name tags, which I scoured for the names “Andres” and “Sarah” but never found them. Nothing even came close.

A stark reality hit. What if they weren’t real?  Maybe she was so desperate to find friends that she made them up.

First, Andres?  She told me that he was Mexican, but that his family had just moved here from Canada.  I was starting to get suspicious.

And then, Sarah.  She was described has having wavy light brownish, blondish hair, just like my daughter.  And, she was supposedly just as tall as my daughter, which is freakishly tall and highly unlikely.  She liked all the same things – not all the girly-girl princess stuff that all the other girls in the class still liked, this girl liked science and sports and rocks and poetry and Pokemon.  Too good to be true.

Pretend friends are normal for 7-year olds, perhaps a little sad, but normal.  It was nothing to really worry about.  Still, I worried.  I lingered at the picnic in hopes that they might come late.   I asked a few other kids if they had seen Andres or Sarah at the picnic but I only got blank stares.  On the ride home, my daughter talked about her new friends.  Yes, she assured me, they were at the picnic, and they had all played together.

I Googled imaginary friends.

• It has been theorized that children with imaginary companions may develop language skills and retain knowledge faster than children without them.

So, she is smarter than kids without imaginary friends!

• According to one study, by the age of seven, sixty-five percent of children report that they have had an imaginary companion at some point in their lives… Children have reported creating or maintaining imaginary friends as pre-teens or teenagers, and very few adults report having imaginary friends. This may, however, signal a serious psychological disorder.

She is either completely normal or, she has a serious mental disorder.

• On the popular children’s show, Sesame Street, Snuffleupagus was originally portrayed as Big Bird’s imaginary friend. However, the Children’s Television Workshop ended this in light of high-profile stories on paedophilia and sexual abuse of children …CTW feared the Snuffy plot would scare children into believing that they could not tell “fantastic” stories to parents or other responsible adults without being dismissed as a liar or ridiculed, even if these stories were true.

And, confronting her about it will make her a prime target for perverts.  

Shit.  Google sucks.

I waited. I thought about calling the teacher or the school, but what would I say?  She seemed so happy.  And, she was playing with other kids too.  She was playing basketball and Star Wars at recess.  Ok, so she was only playing with boys, but she had friends.  And, they were real — flesh and blood kids that I had actually seen!  Everything was going to be fine.  If she chose to embellish her life with an exotic foreign friend and a future Olympic gymnast (yes, that was one of Sarah’s many talents), then so be it.

When I was a kid I had an imaginary pet chicken named Charlie.  I took him (in his cage of course) everywhere.  I don’t know how old I was, but I do remember him.  I knew he wasn’t real, but I liked having him around.  I would tell fantastic stories about Charlie.  He said all the things I wanted to say but was afraid to.  He told jokes that were way funnier than anything I could tell on my own.  Once, I made my entire family (aunts and uncles too) wait at the base of the Lincoln Memorial in a driving rainstorm so that Charlie could stop and go to the bathroom.  What a bird!

I reconciled that imaginary friends were just one of the many strange traits I’ve probably passed along to my daughter.  She doesn’t bite her nails yet, but I’m sure she will.  She has poor posture and sings off key.  She craves carbs and will probably drink too much beer in college.  Still, I decided it will all be ok.

The truth was revealed a week later at back-to-school night.  She didn’t bite her nails or slouch.  She sang well.  There was no beer or pretzels.  And, she stood right between Andres and Sarah, who were indeed real.