This is a staple of childhood and often indicate a healthy imagination.These friends help the lonely child to pass an hour in pleasant company, playing games together, running through the back yard, and even practicing social skills as they carry on conversations together. I had a few imaginary friends myself, as I recall.
Steve was perhaps 4 years old at the time, and he already was well on his way to developing what would become a lifelong love of horses. We were driving from our home to the middle of the state to visit our grandmother, and my brother had decided the trip would go faster if he were riding a horse.
Cars in those days had a bench seat in the front as well as in the back, including head rests for the driver and at least the main adult passenger, that could be extended to whatever height was comfortable. To our father, this head rest was at the perfect height for comfort as he drove.
To Steve, the head rest was perfect for a horse.
As we were getting loaded into the car, Steve took a jump rope and worked it under the front of our father's head rest so its two ends dangled down into the back seat like a pair of reins. Steve took them in hand and cried out "Giddyap!' and "yeehaw!" as he rode.
As the car drove down the road, my brother was in his element, riding Sir Galahad across the plains of Texas while clouds of dust trailed behind him and marked where he had been. While Route 22 carried us steadily and uneventfully eastward, a dry zephyr blew across Steve's face and he saw herds of cattle waiting to be driven through the sagebrush and ill-mannered desperadoes awaiting the justice of the frontier.
He whooped and hollered, and loved every minute of it as Sir Galahad moved like water underneath him and carried him ever onward, further up and further in to this wondrous land he had discovered.
This was all a new experience to our father, who once claimed to have been born 18 years old. He had been raised with his younger sister, in a household where children were quiet, well behaved and seen more than they were heard.
He was a good man and long on patience, but life had not prepared him to be the father of four boys all younger than 10. Nor had it suggested that one of his sons would enjoy galloping all over the Old West, using the driver's seat of the family station wagon for his horse. Life had just dropped him in that situation and told him to handle it, the way it does.
It was around the time that Steve had ridden into town to deliver the settlers from the bandits who had rustled the cattle, shot the preacher and stolen all the yellow Zingers from the snack machine that my father finally had enough.
At a traffic light, with that quiet and unspoken exasperation that fathers everywhere think they are concealing from their faces and that children everywhere know and cower from inside the nearest bedroom closet, my father turned around in his seat and grabbed the headrest with both hands. Without a single word, he yanked it violently upward. If a safety mechanism hadn't been in place, I am sure he would have pulled the entire thing from the seat entirely and thrown it into the intersection.
My brother stared in shock at Sir Galahad's broken neck. The return from his cowboy adventures to the back seat was so sudden that Steve gaped, wide-eyed, and suddenly he began to laugh. A second later, I joined in.
Within five minutes we had found a new way to annoy our parents, together. After all, imaginary friends are a lot of fun, but for some jobs only the real thing will do.
Copyright © 2001, 2020 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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