When D.E. was four years old, he asked his papa, a maintenance man and owner of a fine race car, to take him for a ride as his birthday gift. “When I am grown up,” the boy said, “I want to race with you, and my car will be the bigger than yours.” “God bless you, my grandson,” Papa answered. “Since the car has to be fixed all day, I’ll take you too see the race cars.”
“That’s wonderful idea, can we go on Saturday? I’ve never seen a car race before!” He was happy to see all the race cars on the race track, and his papa explained everything to him. When D had gone to the gate, he stopped, his curiosity aroused. He wanted to observe the other drivers that was on the track, and as the car rose to the surface at a distance, his imaginary mind indeed was moving fast, carried by a great wind that always maintained the same distance.
David though that it wouldn’t attracted his papa. After his imaginary friends shouted his name in vain, David went to look for them. “Carl, what are you doing here, standing by the fence?” Grandpa asked David. “What, are you staring at the cars?” David said, “Papa, come here and see!” Papa came to see and looked in other direction and saw the boy was imaginary. He saw himself as grown up, and he was racing his race car. There was a car that raced over the moon! “Despite my forty years,” said his papa, “I would never believe that a race car could jump so high over the moon.”
The boy remained unsure if this was real or he was just imagining the things he had seen at the race track as the drivers slowly moved back and forth on the moon. “All my friends I told you about—that wasn’t really real. But they are because I see them and they talk to me all the time and others think I am talking to myself. I know it’s sound crazy but it’s true. My imaginary friend’s name is Carl and he loves to race cars. I’ve seen him race his car. It blue with white stripes, and when we go to the race, I’ll show you that he is a racer, and he told me when the cars take off to race the cars over the moon, they are racing other cars from the other side of the world. Isn’t that amazing? And Carl always says that he sees them from the other side of the world. Grandpapa just said, “Son it’s okay to have friends, but when your friends start saying things about cars riding on the moon it is not very true. “But Papa, you’ve seen them for yourself! That the car went to the moon and back on this side every Saturday night. Maybe it isn’t true—only because it was special for me. It was a birthday gift, that I have an imaginary place for children.”
