Imagine all the people

I remember the last time I saw my friend, Marcy.

The memory is like a film clip: I was 4 years old, standing at the backdoor and watching a downpour drench my little metal swingset. The wind caught one of the white plastic swings, its metal chain links turning and twisting.

“But Marcy is on that swing!” I exclaimed to my mother. “She’s out there!”

Marcy had somehow slipped outside while I was otherwise occupied. I waved to her, pondered her predicament for a moment, and then decided that I didn’t need to play with her anymore. (Four year olds are fickle like that.)

Marcy, named for Peppermint Patty’s sidekick of Peanuts fame, has not returned since that afternoon in 1983. She was my first and last imaginary friend.

It was not at all shocking when, 28 years later, my own 3 year old daughter, Abbie, began chattering about her “pretend friends” as she called them.

As Abbie generally approaches life with flair and gusto so pronounced that I have actually questioned whether she may have beamed in from another planet, naturally her imaginary friends were more like an entourage.

With the exception of “My Melody,” an invisible 2 year old who shared a moniker with a character from the Hello Kitty cartoon series (apparently naming imaginary friends for secondary characters from highly commercialized cartoons is a family tradition), all of Abbie’s pretend friends had rhyming names.

We mostly heard from 18 year old twins Sasha and Gasha, but occasionally preschool-aged playmates Kasha, Tasha, Lasha, Nasha, Masha and others would join in the fun and mischief. Abbie rallied her troops when she wanted to play a game of Sequence for Kids while her older siblings were in school, or when she was in the mood for a tea party during her younger siblings’ naptime. Other times, the whole clan would jump on my king-sized bed.

It was very busy in our house.

When Abbie first mentioned her pretend friends – fully acknowledging they were not real – I was a little concerned that they were a manifestation of middle-child syndrome, and that maybe being our “special singleton” was making her feel isolated or left out.

Turning to Google, I discovered that my worries were unfounded. In fact, I may have reason to be proud of my little one’s active imagination.

Marjorie Taylor, professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and author of Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them found in her research that 65 percent of children in the U.S., from preschool through age 7, have had an imaginary friend.

“Children with make-believe friends tend to be more imaginative, have richer vocabularies, and are better able to entertain themselves,” wrote Susan Newman, PhD., for PsychologyToday.com. “Whatever purpose they serve and whatever form they take, fantasy friends indicate a fertile imagination that is as likely to belong to a child with as to one without siblings.”

I quickly shared this information with my sister, whose 2 year old daughter had recently announced the arrival of an invisible walrus pal from the North Pole who lived in her bedroom, reading books in the rocking chair.

The relief we shared was palpable. While it doesn’t explain the remaining 95 percent of the time our children seem to take turns playing Mayor of Cuckootown, it was comforting to know that Marcy, My Melody, Sasha, Gasha and The Walrus are acceptable playmates in the mental health community.

Abbie’s entourage has been on inactive status for several months now; perhaps they’ve joined Marcy on the Island of Forgotten Pretend Friends. Or maybe they’re just on summer hiatus, waiting for the big kids to go back to school in August.

Secretly, I’m hoping to overhear at least one last magical tea party or just one more carefully orchestrated Sequence victory before my little girl leaves them behind in favor of school friends and sleepover parties.

But my sister can keep The Walrus.