What was/is your IF like?

[Lynnie]

My first imaginary friends were the classic Disney characters- Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy and Pluto. I remember when I was about three pretending they all had a parade down the hallway of our house to my bedroom, they were so excited to see me!

Around the age of four or five, I "adopted" Disney's Peter Pan characters as my imaginary friends. My story was that Wendy's, John's and Micheal's parents had died, and my parents had adopted them, so they became my sister and brothers. So Peter Pan started visiting my house to hear Wendy's stories, and I'd go with them whenever they visited Never Land. We'd fight Captain Hook and the pirates, and we had the power to both shrink in size and turn ourselves invisible.

At the age of seven, a friend of mine and I came up with the idea of coming up with imaginary husbands, and playing "house" all the time. I named him Philip Chime, after a story I listened to on vinyl record back then. It was with him that I made my most cherished memories of my IFs. I made it so real- he'd work and bring home money so we could buy food and clothes for our nine kids (all dolls of mine). He was always gone during the day because he was "working" and with me non stop in the evenings and weekends. I even imagined we'd fight a time or two, one such time I got so into it emotionally I actually started crying. We became very close over the years. At age 12, I started feeling pressure from my friends that I was getting too old for such games, so one day I cut him off cold turkey. And let me tell you, it was hard! I was so lonesome for his company for years afterward. None of my real friends were as accepting of me as he was, not to mention they of course weren't with me every evening and all day long every weekend.

I also imagined up his family. He had two brothers; one older and one younger. And a younger sister just my age. They lived in another city and would visit sometimes. I imagined I was good friends with his sister, whom I named Samantha, but I didn't play with her as much as I did him.