IMAGINARY REALITY

It is not unusual for kids to have imaginary friends, right?

My five year old niece, Haley, once invented Diamand and Cowie, who still stop by to visit her from time to time.

I also remember keeping a little girl once during college who had such a "friend" named Macy. We were at a baseball game and I held down the seat next to us for Macy to climb up. After waiting what I believed to be an appropraite amount of time to allow an imaginary person to climb into a stadium seat, I let go and the chair flipped back up. The little girl screamed bloody murder, saying....

"YOU SQUISHED MACY!!!!"

Now, I am a fast learner, so far be it from me to "squish" the imaginary friend of my own son.

Park has chosen to name his "friend" Cha-Cha, which also happens to be the same name he has given to my sister, Challi. Have a mentioned how much he LOVES her? Thus, when my sister is not physically around, she IS still around in Park's imagination.

However, Cha-Cha does not simply play with Park and come everywhere with us. She, in fact, is the culprit for any and all misdoings that Park is mistakenly blamed for. Let me give you an example:

Mommy finds a magnet shattered on kitchen floor. After asking Park what happened, he responds, " Uh-Oh, Mommy! Cha-Cha broke magnet!".

Cha-Cha's naughty behavior is not limited to breaking things. She also apparantly excels in taking off diapers, pulling books off of shelves and has even been known to shove other children a time or two. When placing Park in time out for such behaviors listed above, he once looked me square in the eyes and pleadingly said, " Put Cha-Cha in time out, peaze."

And after what happened a few weeks ago, I am tempted to do exactly that.

Park was in the back seat of the car and I heard a slapping noise. I glanced in the rearview mirror in time to see Park's hand (otherwise known as Cha- Cha's ) heavily making contact with his face. Instant tears stung his eyes and piercing screams shattered my ear drums, followed by the hostile accusation, "Cha-Cha HIT me!!"

Now lest you have a bad opinion of his imaginary friend, Cha-Cha is also responsible for some good behavior, as well. Yesterday, she allegedly read Park some books and then cleaned up his tractors for him. "She" usually helps put the laundry away and unload the dishwasher, also.

If she keeps this up, Mommy may be tempted to invite more imaginary friends over.

Of course, there was that one incident when we lost Cha-Cha for that brief period of time. I witnessed Park frantically searching under every pillow on the couch. Thankfully, though, after about 5 minutes of sheer distress and terror, it turned out she had just slipped between two cushions.

And just in case you were worried, this did NOT squish her.