Imaginary or Real?

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 2010


Imaginary or Real?

I want to get this up today and need to get on to making some dinner... the edit will come later, so if you are reading this (because I am typing it for you); try to bear with it.

Half of my life is tied up figuring out if what is running thru my mind is real or imaginary or really imaginary. I know DakotaDawg is real along with the Not So Cute Little Orange Talking Kitty... So are the “Purrfect Kitty” and Big Gray Escapacus.

What are also really real are my friends. I don’t have that many of them… certainly not in the high hundreds or low thousands on FaceBook or in real life.

I had one guy from High School send me a friends request thru FaceBook. I found out his email address and sent him a short message. “Since I wasn’t your friend in High School why in the world would I want to be your friend now after all these years?” I was being nice.

But real friends are real. I know some of my dead friends will always be my friends. My dead friends are really real.

I was thinking that it is a shame that sometimes someone has to be dead to really miss them. Jim Smith was one of those kinds of friends. Jim wouldn’t give you the shirt off of his back because his physique too much of a sight to see for him to remove his shirt… except if it was dark out. So if you did want the shirt off his back it'd be better if it were a new moon. I am certain Jim would just hand it over without asking any questions.


Jim was also one of my mentors. He looked out after me and helped me in ways I am still just barely starting to figure out.


Jim and old Buck ran a printing business called Modern Printers. This always made me laugh because they had some really ancient equipment. Nothing was built by Guttenberg but some presses were built in the 1800’s. The were in his shop and he knew how to massage some pretty nifty things out of those huge old clanking things with leather belts and huge motors.

He could and did, until he died, set lead type, if someone needed or wanted it done. Buck always threw up his hands and did the rolleyes whenever Jim set lead type because that meant that Buck’s work would be doubled fixing the mistakes he saw in Jim’s work. Buck was Jim’s 1099 sub-contract worker. I think Buck was Jim’s partner or possibly boss but no one ever knew for sure except them. They kept that kind of information very close to their vests. Buck was older than dirt; I mean some really old dirt. He was in his late 80’s and he went in to Modern Printers every day to fix Jim’s mistakes and to supervise his boss. Buck was Jim’s mentor too.


Buck and Jim are not imaginary. I was thinking of both of them yesterday and today.


So along these lines; I have been hanging with some folks on the interweb for years. We are each others ‘imaginary friends’. Some of these friends have driven across the country and even up north into 'Kanukistan' to get together once during each summer and at once during each winter to visit with each other; to ride in huge inner tubes behind boats or ski and snowboard. Most of the folks are smart enough to do the innertubing during the summer time and the skiing during the winter although some skied during the summer behind the doc’s speedboat. I have suspicions about what really went on because they often post some inside jokes from the first get together like “Butt up” and something about the "Pleasure Palace".

We exchange gifts that are funny or amusing or even useful and needed on holidays. Frequently someone just sends another something because they need it, want it or would enjoy it. Val sent me a pulley for my car that I couldn't afford and he would take nothing in return.


These are some really good friends


Way back in the old days I used to be on IRC and had some imaginary friends there for years. I still wonder where a couple of them are and how they are doing, like TwiceShy. Back then it was a lot of typing and waiting for responses on a green phosphor screen over the 1400 baud modem.

Now it is all high tech with the forums having fancy interfaces and LOTS of advertising and ways to get a star to show you support the site. We know what each other looks like even if we are still imaginary and we hide our imaginary persona behind Avatars.

One buddy has been missing in action for about a year. He popped in the other day and it was just like old times. Some of us share cell phone numbers and text each other on top of getting together in the thread where we meet daily. I got to see what some of the geology of the west and California looked like because one friend sent pictures attached to text messages from way out in the middle of nowhere to a fellow who posted the shots online for all of us to share.

I am starting to get a little out of whack over my two buddies that live down in the land of Oz that I used to see every morning as they were typing and posting and getting ready for bed. Mick, it is time to post some pics of that baby and you too LupDog. I may just fire off an email and guilt them into letting us know how they are doing.

We have a guy that lives in the Yukon with his ‘fambily’ and another in British Columbia. Another lives in NJ, a guy who lives in North Georgia. A kid that goes to school in GatorLand and a couple of young guys out in Arizona and those parts. People from Texas, Michigan, a transplant from Wisconsin to St. Louis. We have ppl that live in Kalifornificationstan, Washington, Hawaii, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana; that one, I think came from Norway, but now lives where it is just warming up. We have friends from everywhere. And these friends can even tell you how to build a Pergola… yes, we have a nut from Las Vegas who is always shopping but never buying and another older guy like me who is from Reno or something, but he hasn’t been around too much lately. Maybe he is out taking pictures of the wild horses.

I am a bit of the gadfly but since these folks are my imaginary friends. They put up with my quirks for the most part. I am the curmudgeon and just an old goat in general. They even have an animated pic of an old guy waving that they post every once in a while to lift my spirits or let me know that I am getting too close to being the old fart with the sour face.

I have been too busy or poor to go to any of the summer get togethers. As far as the winter ones, since I live in Florida I am not a very skilled skier. If there is one thing I really hate it is snow and the associated foot stamping to try to keep my circulation going. The guy that was MIA, drunk dialed me in the middle of the nite from the first winter get together. Hey-howdy. I got to talk to almost all of them and those I did not talk to I heard carrying on in the background. Normally I would have been sleeping.

Despite the cold, I visited a brother in law and his family over one Xmas holiday in Denver. We went up to the mountains to visit some bird or some other ski resort. We drove back and forth across the continental divide a couple of times and thru a blinding snow storm on roads I wouldn't have driven on in the heat of the summer. I was really worried that the car was going to slide off the cliff that just happened to be on my side of the car. We got so close to the edge, I could see all the way over. I attest, it would have been a long fall before that car even hit anything and came to an abrupt stop.

Since I had only been to the Smokies, my brother in law decided to put me in the front seat so I would have a good view. I really would have preferred lying on the back floor of that Wagoneer. When I kept asking him if it might be safer if he looked ahead once in a while instead of looking me full face explaining the topography, he told me he had very good peripheral vision. He must have, because he is a pilot and I am typing this after all of these years.

When we got to Keystone it was nine below zero and dropping. I watched them come down the slope from the relative comfort of the recliner in front of the huge fire. They finally convinced me to go up to the top of the mountain for lunch. I rode in some kind of tram car up the steep grade suspended from cables that kept rocking back and forth. Just kept on going up, up, up. I expected Clint Eastwood to be hanging off the top with Richard Burton or something. It was freezing up there on top of that mountain and lunch was good. My freezer does not get anywhere near as cold as it was out in the wind on top of that mountain and it makes meat hard and very solid. There was absolutely zero chance I was skiing back down that ‘hill’.

I have good family. They are all friends. Some nieces that have graduated college or are still going even accepted my request to be my friend. I feel honored, since I really barely know them because they lived in Florida too but a lot further south and I was always busy. I spent way too much of my life being too busy but probably a lot of that was imagined and not real.

And, my imaginary friends are one thing I am certain of… my imaginary friends are real. My imaginary friends are real friends. I want to talk to them now to see how they are doing.

I have so many friends I don’t even know where all of them are or where they are from unless I look at a spreadsheet or my email or cellphone contact list.


Oh yes, I have some good friends. Some of them even live in North Florida like Lee.


I wonder if Lee does FaceBook?

POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 3:43 PM 1 COMMENTS

© 06.09.2010 steven d philbrick SR+


Marshall said...

From one imaginary friend to another.