Billy followed us again today. I saw him dressed in a Batman costume by the camel enclosure, fixing me with an evil stare as I stood guarding our bags while Susan and the kids were off in the crowd searching for the ice cream van.
Trust me to have an imaginary friend who is a cross between Peter Pan and the Norse god Loki.
Sometimes Billy appears as a superhero, sometimes as an inanimate object out of place in some obscure setting. He always positions himself to cause me maximum distraction.
He could be a raggedy doll sitting up in the tree at the front of my house or a featherless rubber chicken nestled between expensive rings and necklaces in the jeweller's shopfront.
His imagination knows no bounds; I mean, riding a gold chariot pulled by a team of giant pink and purple polka dot horses hovering above traffic lights in peak hour traffic. Really?
I've read that it is common for small children to have imaginary playmates and that children grow out of the phase as they begin socialising with other children. The adjustment is often sudden, the child going to sleep talking to their imaginary friend and waking the next day denying that they had such a friend.
It isn't usual that a man in his thirties not only still has his imaginary friend but that this friend has grown into a mischievous, vicious pain, hell-bent on ruining my every relationship in its infancy.
I wish he'd go back to Neverland or Asgard.
My relationship with Billy hasn't always been a spiteful one.
Our friendship has, until recent years, been affable and not something that I thought of as abnormal or an ailment that needed to be cured or managed.
Billy was just part of me and often the very best of company.
When I was a toddler, my mum and dad thought it was cute that I had developed an imaginary friend. They indulged the stories that I told of our playtime adventures.
However, over time, they showed concern when I'd relate stories of the mischief that Billy had talked me into and became quite distressed when I blamed Billy for stealing objects and telling lies. I thought it most unfair when I was the one who was locked in my room and not Billy. And so, before I first went to school, I realised it was best not to mention Billy to anyone. He was my special secret friend that no one else could share. Mum and dad were greatly relieved when they thought their son had returned to normalcy.
Billy became a problem when I started to make friends with real kids. He would show that he was not happy in not-so-subtle ways, often in the form of accidents with my new pals, resulting in minor injuries, abrasions, bruises and the occasional broken limb. My new friends would mysteriously fall out of trees, trip over objects, step into the path of older kids on push bikes, and in one instance, a girl almost drowned.
Wendy was the little girl who lived down the street from me, and it was only natural that we became friends when our mums met in the park to let us play on the swings together. We wandered off one day while the mums were engaged in intense conversation and not watching us. Wendy fell into a stagnant pool at the back of the park. Nobody saw how she fell in, but the mums came running when they heard Wendy's hysterical shrieks.
I didn't give these incidents much thought, however friends became less numerous as the neighbourhood parents noticed a pattern forming around me and these accidents, and guided their children towards other friends.
I didn't mind; I still had Billy.
I treasured my secret relationship with Billy throughout my school years. He caused trouble only when I started showing an interest in girls in my later high school years. Billy would sulk and slink around in my bedroom, crashing into furniture, ranting, raving and beseeching me, asking why I was ignoring him. He needn't have worried; none of the girlfriend relationships lasted for long, as I always seemed to say the wrong thing at the right time. I thought it wasn't in my nature to form lasting romantic relationships.
Billy had his uses in my academic endeavours while I was at uni. I gained a high distinction for my thesis in the final year of my Arts degree on the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft. I was searching for a thread to develop my theory on how a nineteen-year-old girl, a daughter of a clergyman who had a sheltered upbringing in a small English country town, could write one of the most frightening fiction novels in British literature.
Billy came to my rescue by pointing out that Mary was the stereotype of a child who would have had an imaginary friend. Mary could have fashioned Frankenstein's monster on her imaginary friend. I feel a chill when I remember Billy's words as he explained in a threatening tone that not all imaginary friends have to be nice.
I met Susan a few years after uni. She is a bit older than me and comes with a ready-made family; two wonderful small children, Timmy and Annie, who I adore as my own.
Susan is a practising child psychologist and a great listener, so it felt natural that I would share Billy with her. Susan understood Billy as soon as I introduced him. That is more than I can say for Billy. He changed after that, from a best friend for life to a stalking antagonist in no time flat.
I'm sure that Billy will settle down eventually and be a friend to Susan and the kids; after all, they don't appear to have imaginary friends of their own, and there is plenty of love in our family to share around.
I hope that is enough to protect them.
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