I don’t remember when they first appeared in my life, but I suspect I was about four years old. My memories before kindergarten are few. The family sitting room was the first room she entered when she walked through the front door. We lived in a two-family house on the first floor, with my grandparents on the second floor. In fact, they owned the house that was located on a busy avenue in a small town in New Jersey.

My imaginary friends lived in the wall behind the front door. I hit the wall and pressed my face against it trying to peer through the painted sheetrock to catch a glimpse of her world. I guess I created Cooney, Chetty, and Susan because I wanted to play someone. I was so ahead of my time creating a virtual play date.

Usually when they were asked if they wanted to play, Susan was most of the time the only one who could, because Chetty and Susan always went to Florida and left Susan at home. I felt bad for her. We danced for hours in the living room, doing fabulous acrobatics from the cushion looking at each other in the wall of mirrors my parents had installed at the time. That was the style in the ’70s. We had an entire wall of mirror tile with a layer of crackle film. So modern! Oh, don’t you dare put your fingerprints on them, or you’d hear my mother’s anger. It was one of the many things that bothered her.

I remember running to the middle of the wall between the dining room and the kitchen while my mom and dad were sitting around finishing dinner, telling them stories about my friends and just sitting there chewing and nodding like this was normal and okay. them. I was fucking crazy and they let me go with it. To tell you the truth, I always had the feeling that they thought I was a bit out of line.

I can’t remember when my friends disappeared and we stopped playing together, but I still have to doubt their existence. I wonder why I gave them these crazy names. I mean, Susan is conventional, but Cooney and Chetty? Their names are as familiar as the friends he had in elementary school. I have no recollection of his appearance. That will always be a mystery.

Experts would say that children develop imaginary friends to help them deal with change or times of transition. Maybe subconsciously I knew that my life would change soon, a kind of sixth sense, because until that moment I think we were happy as a family. Once again, my memories at this age and younger are scant. All I know is that my imaginary friends were comforting me, like a blanket or a stuffed animal.