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Yes - an inamginary guinea pig that lived under the sink in the bathroom. When I would “talk” to him, I’d use my hand as a puppet pretending like it was him (scary)
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No - I have an older brother
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Yes, I had quite a few friends
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I was in junior high or high school before I let the guinea pig go.
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Yes, her name was Whokin, she got into tons of trouble in school.
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I’m the baby of the family, I have an older sister.
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I had lots of friends but Whokin could spend the night any time I wanted her to.
BAH! I hit the wrong button, I meant to scroll up. Anyway, I was about 8 when I finally saw the last of Whokin.
I have two kids and both of my kids have an imaginary friend. My son’s friend comes to play while his other friends are in school, his name is Bad Levi as opposed to my son who is the Good Levi. My daughter’s friend is Jane. Jane is horrible and says nasty things to me that my daughter just can’t repeat but is shocked by. I hear alot of “Jane how can you say that to Mommy?!” so I don’t think Jane likes me when I make Luci go to bed or take a bath.
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Yes. His name was Selsun Blue. I can’t say I have any idea why I named my imaginary friend after a shampoo. I was around 4 or 5 years old.
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No. One older sister.
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Yes - quite a few children in the neighborhood, and also I was friends with most of the guys in my class at school.
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I can’t have been much more than 6 when I stopped talking about Selsun Blue. I kind of just forgot about him - no dramatic leave-taking or anything.
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Yes. Though the greatest day was when my mom found a cig butt in the kitchen and I told her it was my friend. “He smokes?!?” “I’m trying to get him to quit.” None of my family smokes. At the time, none of our friends smoked and certainly not in our kitchen. No real clue how it got there, and my four year old explination is the closest we have. I caan’t remember my friend’s name but he was a very short adult and would have to go to work at odd hours which were some of my first moments of really not liking the adult world.
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Only child until I was seven.
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At the time I had the neighborhood pack of small children and the guy next door who kept an eye out for us all. (My childhood memories include the fact that he had his livingroom out on his front porch and rode a great big motorcycle and would let me sit on his shoulders and that he liked hanging out with us kids and would always watch us, etc. My adult memories include the day my mom told me he was a dealer. Heh.)
4.Probably around six-seven or so.
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Yes - but only imaginary characters and personalities. They all had physical form (stuffed animals). But most of it came to be playing wiht my little sister, so I don’t know if that counts as an “imaginary” friend.
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Yes, but only until I was 3, and I didn’t have imaginary friends that I remember during that period.
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I had your standard kid sized group of friends.
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Hell, I still remember half of the characters whenever I see the stuffed animals. I still talk to them when I move them too, and I feel bad if I’ve forgotten their name or their place in our imaginary society.
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Yes, at least two. Oddly, one of my imaginary friends was only at school, while the other was with me all the time.
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I was never an only child, but my brother is 7 years older than I am, so in many respects I was treated like one.
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Had plenty of friends at school, though none in the neighborhood.
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I don’t remember exactly–first or second grade? I never made a conscious decision to stop “seeing” my imaginary friends.
So funny that this thread turned up when it did. I’ve been having an unprecedented run of bad luck and over the weekend was giving serious thought to reacquainting myself with my imaginary friend.
1. Did you ever have an imaginary friend?
Yes. His name was Robert.
2. Were you an only child at any point?
Nope. I’m the younger of 2 sisters.
3. Did you many friends?
I wouldn’t say many but I wasn’t a loner either.
4. How old were you when you ditched your pal?
I don’t recall. Though now that I think of it whenever I think about it it’s in the context of where we lived until I was six. Maybe Robert didn’t move with us.
Selson Blue, ha! Sheesh, reading all these stories, now I want an imaginary friend. I think I’ll make one up now. We’ll call her Ariel
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No
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Yes, for 5 1/2 years
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Not really.
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N/A
1.) No. At least, not that I can remember.
2.) I am still an only child.
3.) No, I had very few friends.
4.) n/a
Yes. God.
I don’t know if this counts as imaginary friend, but it might to some people.
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I have these people that live in my head. They are sometimes adopted from outside media, sometimes they just pop up randomly. They are more like alternate personalities than imaginary friends. Still, when I was younger I used to sometimes refer to them as real, and tell other people about them. I used to have them interact with my brother Luke. Now they interact with other people online.
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No. An older brother and 7 younger siblings.
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No, not until high school.
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I still have them. Only two are the same that I’ve had since childhood. The rest are new.
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Did you ever have an imaginary friend?
A chicken and an egg. Mia Bia and Pinky respectfully -
Were you an only child at any point?No
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Did you many friends?No
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How old were you when you ditched your pal? Sixish, I think.
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Yup, I had an imaginary group of friends that I called the Frothings. No, I didn’t know that it was a real word until later. (I also thought I’d made up the word “bonafide” when I was 7 or 8) Then I started to make up stories about imaginary people in my head… and still do. (and have other imaginary friends)
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Yes, I was about 5 when my beloved brtoher came along.
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There were some kids my age around the neighborhood, but I was only really friends with a few of them. We were pretty much all friendly to each other, though.
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I still make up stories about imaginary people (see #1), and still have a few imaginary friends… not the Frothings, but others.
F_X
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Did you ever have an imaginary friend?
Yes – one, named Christine. -
Were you an only child at any point?
Yes (Had a much older sister who moved in and out of the house when I was young.) -
Did you many friends?
No -
How old were you when you ditched your pal?
Five or six – the last time I remember interacting with Christine, I was five, I think close to six.
- Did you ever have an imaginary friend?
Yes, I had several, particularly in junior high. I still have some of them, though they’re more like story characters that constantly appear in my daydreams.
- Were you an only child at any point?
Yes, up until I was 6 1/2, but I didn’t have imaginary friends then. I don’t think I had any until I was around 10. I’ve always been a rather solitary person with a vivid imagination, but I never had imaginary friends until I really started writing.
- Did you many friends?
I did when I was younger, but I had very few from 5th grade to college (I’m finishing my sophomore year). That’s when the imaginary friends showed up, when I felt like I needed company during my teenage years.
- How old were you when you ditched your pal?
I never ditched any of them, they just sort of faded out of my thoughts as new characters came in.
- Did you ever have an imaginary friend?
Nobody long-term, just people I’d imagine I was playing with or talking to at the moment, often characters from TV. I still do this, to some extent: when I’m walking by myself I pass the time thinking about how various technologies work, and I find myself imagining I’m describing them to H.G. Wells or someone like that. Someone unaware of late 20th century tech, but smart enough to call bullshit if I make anything up. Hell, I sometimes find myself imagining other Dopers sitting around talking with me, and not all of them as friends.
- Were you an only child at any point?
All my life.
- Did you have many friends?
There were very few kids in my neighborhood, so I didn’t have anyone to hang around with until grade school.
- How old were you when you ditched your pal?
Well, the imaginary random conversation partners are still around. I was the human representative of a society of small animals for about a year during fifth grade, but then I hit puberty and my fantasy life turned to other subjects.
p.s. I don’t think I ever told anyone that I was talking with [imaginary person’s name], but rather that I was pretending that I was talking with them. Except for the small animal thing, the reality/imagination boundary was always pretty sharp.
No. But I used to have an imaginary enemy. His name was “The Donald.” Every night I would have to throw my pillow downstairs to kill him before I could go to sleep. Presumably he was resurrected each day.
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Yup - his name was Pokey, and he was “just like me, except he’s a boy.” I got pissed when my best friend came up with an imaginary friend named Pokey, because mine was real, dammit!
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Always have been, always will be.
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I had several friends - about average for preschool-kindergarten age, I guess. The aforementioned best friend lived in my neighborhood and we played a lot, so it’s not as if I spent that much time alone, even as an only child.
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I think Pokey went away about the time I started going to school on a regular basis. No grand departure; I guess I just had other things on my mind.
An anecdote: I don’t actually remember seeing or playing with Pokey; most of what I now know was told to me from my mom. One story, though, gives me the willies. Mom said she found me sitting on the bathroom floor, absolutely bawling my eyes out. She heard me and asked what was wrong, and I pointed up to the corner above the shower, and said “Pokey’s laughing at me.” And continued to cry for a good long while, even when my mother took me to another room and held me. Scared my mother to death - she couldn’t fathom something in my imagination making me that upset. shrugs