The 5-year-old is not a person

Lucy the 5-year-old has been talking about her imaginary friends for years.  Recently she told us about Alice, and Alice has been around a lot lately.  A few days ago: “Alice my imaginary friend is 1 month older than me. She’s 6 years old. She can’t hear you. And there are also different colored dots that I catch in my hand.”

This morning on our walk to school the sidewalk was crowded with all of her imaginary friends.  There were 100 blinking lights in different colors  everywhere all around us, and I learned that they go to space and back and they walk by blinking.  Alice was also with us.  She always wears same clothes, pink dress and pink pants, because she doesn’t have a home, and she doesn’t need to wear rainboots or a rainjacket because the rain doesn’t touch her. Even though she’s older than Lucy, she’s the same height.

All of these imaginary friends, Alice and the blinking lights, are allergic to grownups so grownups can’t see them.  Even 9-year-old’s can’t see them because 9-year-old’s are almost grownup.

I asked Lucy if she was ever an imaginary person and she said, “I’m not a person. I’m 4 things – cat, shark, sloth, dinosaur, but not a person. My friend Oscar is a vampire.  He’s not a person either, just a vampire. I’m a cat because I  can lap up water out of a bowl and swallow it.  I’m a shark because I can swallow an orange slice without chewing it. I’m a sloth because I can hang upside down without falling.  I’m a dinosaur because my feet stomp loudly on the ground. I’m not not not a person. Sometimes I’m a person, but not today.”