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MONK AND DEEBIE SAVE ANOTHER CHILD
Monk and Deebie were my imaginary friends when I was a child.
I use the term “imaginary friends” as shorthand so you’ll know approximately what I’m talking about.
The truth is, Monk and Deebie were in no way imaginary. As any adult who ever had such companions will tell you, imaginary friends are very real, very solid, very three-dimensional and quite alive.
If you’ve ever had the privilege of living close to an imaginary friend, you know what I’m talking about. If you have never for a moment enjoyed the presence of an imaginary friend, then I can’t imagine how you got through childhood’s enormous obstacles in one piece.
Monk and Deebie lived with me in a world all their own, a world exactly contiguous to yours and mine.
This is not exactly a parallel universe, because both the universe of Monk and Deebie and the universe of you and me exist simultaneously in the same place. And, yes, two worlds can and do exist in the same location at the same moment, as any child can tell you.
Monk and Deebie were a fully adult couple, a middle-aged husband and wife who lived peacefully and with comfortable dignity in a small home that I could occupy at any time. They often joined my family for meals, and I often joined them in their home for meals and camaraderie.
Being the luckiest child alive, I was granted the most gentle and understanding real-life family you can imagine. My mother and father and sister took my childhood seriously. They never made fun of Monk and Deebie. They accepted me and my only friends. They set places at our little garage apartment kitchen table for this couple they could only see through my eyes.
My family and Monk and Deebie nurtured and supported me. As I said, I was the luckiest child alive.
The great thing about Monk and Deebie was they were exactly my size, even though they were grownups.
Monk always wore a nicely-tailored brown, double-breasted suit and tie and smoked a large cigar. Deebie was neatly attired in a 1940′s Sunday school dress complete with apron for working around their little kitchen.
One day, Monk and Deebie disappeared.
As a child full of energy and imagination and challenges at hand, I did not know they had packed up and moved on to support the next three-year-old shy kid who needed them. Later, I imagined that Monk and Deebie traveled around, helping one kid till things looked safe and stable, then leaving to help another…
Ever since childhood, now and then, I think about Monk and Deebie, my very first personal friends, friends who never let me down, never criticized me. Friends who to this day accept me the way I was and the way I am.
To this day, I am certain that if they ever decide to re-appear and visit me they will still be accepting and loving and as comfortably situated in my heart as they always were in their tiny living room when I was three of age.
I’ve discussed the concept of imaginary friends with adults who had them around when they were kids, and I’ve noticed that their imaginary friends were every bit as important to them as mine were to me. I don’t understand any of this at all. But you know, I’m not sure I want to understand or probe too deeply.
After all, what if Monk and Deebie return and find that I no longer believe in them?
What an embarrassment that would be.
Here’s hoping that you and Monk and Deebie are comfortable having a fine time remembering the good and disenfranchising the bad and just generally having a happy thought intrude itself on your existence once in a while in this real and imaginary life
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.