Recently one of the kids’ friends came over and his new nanny dropped him off. Her name was Sally and she was very sweet. I told her that I would never forget her name because we lived with a Sally for nearly two years. In fact Sally even moved houses with us once. Sally was Jane’s imaginary friend from the time Jane was nearly three until nearly five. Sally appeared along with the trauma of becoming a big sister and eased the transition nicely.
Recently Mr. G got a new guitar and has been playing it day and night. This means that we get to hear Lola get worked out slowly over the course of a week and then there’s another week of Lola being played well but repeated over and over again. Our house has a reasonably open layout. You can hear it everywhere but in the bedrooms. Did I mention that I bought Mr. G the guitar? As a gift. Gift – torture device, tomato – toMAHto.
Every so often Mr. G will announce that he’s going to hang out with his friend Justin. I immediately upped our life insurance because I’m not an expert but I suspect that adult men with imaginary friends are difficult to insure.
Tentatively I asked my husband who Justin is. A smile came across his face. “Justin is my guitar teacher.”
“Your guitar teacher?”
“Yes, he’s always nice and he’s always happy and he’s my guitar teacher.”
And then I met Justin and found that he is all of those things. He is always nice, he is always happy and he is Mr. G’s guitar teacher.
Justin is also the guitar teacher for at least another 300,000 YouTube subscribers so I’m not the only woman whose husband has Justin as an imaginary friend. I’m probably not even the only woman who sends the imaginary friend a few dollars every month via PayPal because her husband insists that he’s a guitar teacher and we pay guitar teachers.
Somewhere around the 3 minute mark you’ll hear what I hear all weekend long. It sounds like a smiling Tasmanian singing:
I met her in a club down in North SoHo where you A champagne and it D just like cherry E chord
No pain no gain?