People often aren't what they seem.  Some fearless Civil War soldiers were discovered to be females after their deaths.  That handsome young Pharaoh down the street who always seemed like such a nice boy ended up marrying his sister and then putting a nasty curse on anyone happening to disturb his silly old corpse.  My mother used to be fond of saying "You never know someone until you've lived with them" and I guess it's true, even if my first college English professor didn't accept this as an excuse when I mistakenly referred to Hemingway as "Crete's most famous 17th century juggler" in a term paper.

     In my own experience, no single person has ever surprised me more in this regard than my imaginary friend, Sylvia.  As long as I imagined her from a distance, she seemed remote, unapproachable, and cold, with indistinct features and a voice too soft to be heard.  Once I got up the nerve to imagine her at my side, however, she transformed into a close friend who not only turned out to have a lot to say but whose mouth could actually be seen to move when she said it.
     Unlike most men, I happen to like that in a woman.

     I've been imagining Sylvia ever since 7th grade, I think, and yesterday, as on every major holiday, I snuck away from my life long enough to spend a few choice moments with her.  As I may have mentioned before (or possibly muttered in my sleep), we have a special relationship based on the solid foundation of her willingness to laugh at my jokes and my willingness to massage her feet.  Having had the good fortune yesterday of not cutting off either of my own feet while mowing the grass, I felt it incumbent upon me to share the wealth, so to speak, by giving her an especially fine foot massage.  This put her in such a good mood that she actually laughed at my serious comments as well as my jokes. 
     Imaginary friends simply don't get any better than Sylvia.

     Not even over-educated, under-employed European ones like Hans, though he does perhaps come close when he agrees to share those Swiss chocolates of his molded in the shape of Franz Kafka.

     Sylvia has changed a bit over the years as she evolved from a minor distraction in Social Studies class to a major comfort during the Reagan presidency to "Miss Growl Grrrl - 1994" to the finely tuned soulmate she is today.  Three things have remained constant, however: Her enchantingly short black hair, her oceanically restless mind, and her wheelchair.
     I can't do her hair justice, so I won't even try to describe it.  The shimmer and roar and crash of the waves of her thoughts similarly resist easy description, and so must await a time when I am a better wordsmith than I am today.
     That leaves her wheelchair, doesn't it?  Yes, it does - I've just checked.  Shame on you if you tried to fool me by saying anything else, and an extra helping of shame if it happens to have been naughty.

     I'm not sure why she's in a wheelchair, other than the fact that she has no feeling or muscle control between her waist and her ankles.  Whenever I ask her what happened she merely says "Knitting accident" and changes the subject.  I used to believe her, too.  Now I suspect her of committing a first degree put-on.  No matter.  However she came to be the way she is, I wouldn't have her any other way, lest she have the ability to kick my ass for some of the put-ons I've allegedly committed myself.
     How is it medically possible for someone to have no feeling or muscle control from the waist to the ankles but to have both in one's feet?  I don't know.  All I know is that she does in fact have both feeling and muscle control in her feet - and I even suspect that she has far, far more than normal.  It's as if all the sensitivity and strength  that normally would reside between her waist and ankles somehow slid down into her heel and toes, giving them such an exquisite excess of these qualities as the rest of us may only dream of, though admittedly the only evidence I have to back this up is the trophy she won back in 1977 for tap dancing.  My wife has opined on more than one occasion that Sylvia's G-spot must have slipped to the area between her remarkable instep and her impressive phalanges judging from the noises coming from my head when I imagine giving her a massage, but I myself really couldn't say, busy as I always am just then spewing witticisms....

     But, as usual, I'm afraid I've said too much.  Instead of talking about my imaginary friends when they aren't here to participate themselves in the conversation, it's now clear that I would have been much better off sharing my recent discovery that pillbugs aren't really bugs at all but crustaceans, of all things.  Why, I think even a long and boring rant about how incredible it is that such supposedly learned men as Stephen Jay Gould and George Will can be obsessed with baseball would have been better than this. 
     I can already hear the squeaking of Sylvia's wheels as she comes to interrogate me without mercy about the mentioning of her name outside her presents.
     Thank goodness I've done little else today and thus am rested up enough to give her what I hope will be the most propitiative foot massage of her life!

     Hmmm, might not hurt to offer her that chocolate head of old Franz I've been saving for just such an emergency, either....

"Any use of the date rape drug commonly known as GHB (gamma hydroxy butyrate) is dangerous, immoral, and on the verge of being declared quite illegal.  Even small amounts can lead to confusion, coma, major organ damage, and sudden death.  UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD IT BE SLIPPED INTO THE DRINKS OF YOUR FRIENDS, RELATIVES, OR COMPLETE STRANGERS.  The belief that this is the only way you might ever be able to get others to sit still for you for more than a minute while you read your on-line journal to them is NO EXCUSE, however sincere and logical that belief may be.  If merely getting others drunk with alcohol is insufficient for you to have your verbose way with them, try writing better, shorter, more 'listener friendly' entries.  Or try passing off some better journal writer's entries as your own.  Or start a game of Russian roulette, what the hay.  There are always alternatives to GHB.  Find them!  It's the right thing to do.  Many are cheaper than GHB, anyway.  And you just might save yourself the trouble of having to post a little notice like this on your own damn site, to boot."