WikiHow: Imaginary Friends

Just to clarify, my friends are real people. Sometimes, I just worry that my life isn't real. 

I haven't had an actual imaginary friend since I was 4. His name was Stephen, which honestly was an interesting name choice, considering my real life best friend in my Pre-K class was also named Stephen.

I also had an entire imaginary world and an over-active imagination.

Today, we will be discussing WikiHow on imaginary friends.

I think WikiHow is one of the most entertaining websites in all of the Internet. I mean there is an entry for anything and everything, and there are just some things that the step-by-step approach was not meant to be applied to. Like, "How to Sympathize" and "How to Avoid Losing a Friend to Someone You Hate". 

WikiHow has several articles about imaginary friends, the most prominent of which is "How to Make an Imaginary Friend". The very first thing this article states is that, "The best kind of friend is an imaginary friend. Why? Because your imaginary friend always loves to play with you, loves to listen to you, and never hurts your feelings". 

That sounds like a pretty sweet deal, I'm in. 

Most of the steps involve brainstorming, emphasis on the fact that my imaginary friend can be whatever I want it to be. For the most part, it seems similar to the process of creating a character for a story. Except that the story is real life.

"Step 9: Never neglect your imaginary friend. They should be allowed to be complex creatures like the rest of us!" 

My favorite part of the article is tips and warnings at the end. I mean really you should just go read them all yourself, but my personal favorites are:

"If they don't want to play, don't make them." ... Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose? 

"Do not accidentally sit on your imaginary friend."

"Don't give them the same name as yourself or a close family member/friend. This is just confusing." It worked out just fine when I did it with Stephen, thank you very much.

"People might think you are weird and/or make fun of you." 

We should all have imaginary friends.

I think what I find so amusing about this article is the instruction manual style approach to something so abstract and creative. The reason we have imaginary friends as kids is that there are no rules to it. An imaginary friend can be anything you want it to be, that's the beauty of it.

As a kid, I had an entire imaginary world where I could go to escape whenever I wanted to. Remember when "pretend" was a real game that could keep you entertained for hours?

I wish I was still capable of having an imaginary friend. Not because I need more friends, but because I wish I could still access that level of my imagination.

Maybe we should all just head over to Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and adopt one today.