The Imaginary Replacement

  Being the oldest out of three girls has truly changed my opinion to why having an imaginary friends should be weird. When I was at the age of six I can truly recall my Little sister, she was at the age of four at the time, playing by her self as she sat calmly talking to mid air.I always felt the need to pass by her and say something mean or judge her for doing such a thing like that.

  I always had my mom around, from pre-k to elementary. She was always at my school field trips, there was not one trip she would be absent from. My mom was my best friend, therefor I really never felt the need to come up with an imaginary friend. All the attention I needed and wanted was always given to me by her. Although after a while the attention was not so much given to me anymore due to the fact that she went back to college to fulfill her dream of being a nurse. I was impatient and selfish of letting my best friend go, because I was so attached to my mom I felt the need to create a friend of my own. My friends' name was Liz; even though she was pretend, Liz kept me distracted for a while and kept my mind off of the betrayal that I felt on the inside.

  Even though I had my younger sister Meg to keep me company, she was to busy having her certain kind of fun with her imaginary friends, and yes friends, there was more than just one. I on the other hand was being entertained playing Tea Party and dollies. Dollies has always been a girly way of describing, playing barbies. Trying to have an imagination was very tough for me although I tried my best to try and get it in my head that Liz was my new best friend. As we played tea party, I sat at the end of a small coffee table my mom use to have in the middle of the living room and my imaginary friend would sit on the opposite end. I can literally recall telling Liz, "ok do not forget, pinky up!" and there we would both sit drinking our teas together. Playing dollies was a little different, when playing on your own it is still necessary to be the voice of your doll. But because Liz was fake she was not realistic I had to be her dolls voice as well, that was not fun at all.

  After a while of attempting to replace my mom with my imagination, I decided to go back to reality and recall all the good memories I spent and created with my mom. My child hood was very great I was a happy little girl with my mom always by my side that I necessarily did not need an imaginary figure to fulfill her spot. On the other hand my little sister was pretty much explanatory to why it is she created her friends. By the time my little sister was able to talk and walk my mom had already gone back to school so she did not have any one to keep her company nor did she have the full experience of my mom being in her child hood as much.

  Everyone has their own way of dealing situations differently, my solution was to create Liz. As a child we do not understand or fully know how to handle situations to losing your mom or a best friend, therefor I handled it in this kind of way. It was an awkward moment in my child hood to go through this phase but yet a memorable party of my life.



 
 

Best Friends

Living in a small neighborhood from the age of one to my teen years, i  became close to the new girl on the block. We were both at the age of ten when she moved four houses down from mine. One school day as the bus came around to pick us up for elementary, she got on first and I followed behind her. As she took her seat I sat right next to her and began talking to her trying to get to know this new girl. We came to find out we had many things in common and got a long real well, therefor we soon became best friends.

As soon as we got dropped off at home from the school bus, we would go straight inside the house and drop our back packs wherever we could and run to each others houses to play. We had no problem going back and forth to our houses for quiet a while, till one afternoon when it was her turn to come to my house I got a phone call from her and told me there was a huge black brown dog outside. This huge dog was a Rottweiler! The owner of this dog lived right in the middle of both of our houses, there was absolutely no way we could try and get pass this house we thought to our selves. I told her I would try and distract the dog and once the dog was not looking she would have to run as fast as she could to my house.

It became a routine for us to do when going to each others houses, it was easy and funny at the same time because even though we knew the dog was not realizing we were passing by, we would still have that mini heart attack and ran like it was behind us. Watching her do this every time was priceless because she ran very slow but tried so hard to run. Sooner or later the dog was not alone outside, the owner had gotten a Chihuahua as well.
Everyone knows those dogs are very loud and annoying and tend to bark for every little thing. Therefor we no longer were able to distract this big dumb Rottweiler. We still attempted to try and pass by the house and when we did the smaller dog would start to bark as soon as it seen us outside. once the barking started, the bigger dog would get up and just stare at us till we went back inside the house.

 The last thing we wanted to do was ask our moms to go drop us off because we knew that would be a ridiculous thing to do knowing we only lived four houses down! We had no choice but to ask but they insisted to just run that the dogs were not going to do anything to us, as I decided to listen to my mother I tried to not show fear and calmly attempted walking to her house, as I looked back I seen my mom holding a broom, typical Mexican. My mom knew these dogs were going to come after us, otherwise she would not have been outside holding her broom in her hand. Before you knew it my mother came running towards the dogs trying to scare them to let us get by. On the other hand my friends mom was handling her situation a little differently.

When she would try and come over her mom would give her a dog treat and told her when she would see the dogs getting up, she needed to throw the treats opposite from the direction she was going to. Her mom was a genius we told ourselves, I immediately went to my mom and told her what she was doing, so we went to the store and bought dog treats too! This solution worked out great we no longer had problems going back and forth because the dogs came to liking us due to the fact we would give them treats so they would not attack us, and I'm sure they liked that idea. We were basically bribing them to not attack us by giving them what they loved.
  My childhood would always be drawn back to this moment! Even though we grew up to be pretty good friends up to high school we no longer keep in touch but when we see each other we sit back and start to remember all the silly things we did together. The memories will always be there no matter how much time will pass by.