IFAQ – Imaginary Friends
Why is it that when adults have multiple personalities they are put in a mental hospital, but when a child has imaginary friends it’s cute? From Vianne
What an excellent question! It doesn’t seem fair, does it? That’s like Ray Romano said about his son. pparently when he was getting him ready for a bath the water… stimulated him. And he was not shy: “Oh, Peepee big! Peepee big!” To quote Ray: “Once again, cute. But Grandpa does it… no. That’s not fair. That’s not fair to grandpa. What kind of double standard is that?”
I think I have an answer though. Apparently youth is a mental illness. It’s a genetic disease, so everyone is born with it, and most will grow out of it in a number of years. So when a child has an imaginary friend, or yells out very embarrassing things, we attribute that to their disease and pray they will grow out of it soon.
Unfortunately, not all people grow out of it. When it’s an adolescent that is infected, we call it “youth.” But when an adult has it, we tend to call it “Immaturity.” The immaturity disease can manifest itself in many ways, from yelling out embarrassing things to having an imaginary friend (usually a real person… they just ‘imagine’ that he/she is their friend).
You know, after defining the disease like that… I know a lot of adults who suffer from immaturity. Maybe we should come up with medication to treat it. Especially for America… it’s practically a pandemic!
November 19th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
There’s no cure, probably because its difficult to get people to settle on a defintion.