Three Years with My Buds

Three Shadows, three characters, three smarty-pants boys, three brothers, three imaginary friends. Red, Chris, and Blake.

They turn 3 today.

3 years ago today, I had the bumbling idea to create creatures called Shadows; they are, ironically enough, shadows. I know. Crazy, right?

I know you're all an oil painting. And I'm talking to still-life. But even so, I continue! I strive! I'll tell you this story even if your ears are plugged!

September 14th, 2020, I was in sixth grade. The school year had just started, and my classroom was the living room, and my teacher was my mom's old laptop that was (and still is) older than me. My chair was a fluffy blue beanbag and my eyes were fixed on the prize.

The Story.

The Story was the first story I had ever created and finished as a book. WindWaker: The Never-Ending Story was the second, although I never finished all of the series itself because the file was deleted by my old school. The Story was my first official work, and I was hecka proud of it.

Why?

I poured my heart into that thing!

In sixth grade, I was the loneliest person on Earth. At least it felt that way. I had no one but myself to keep me company, and as a sassy 11-year-old, myself could get annoying sometimes. I could barely tolerated myself, and also the fact that I had no friends. Both of those were significant reasons as to why I created Red, Chris, and Blake.

Not only why I created them, but why they were my imaginary friends.

Most 11-year-olds didn't and don't have imaginary friends. But I was an outcast. I would learn later in life that my imagination and my dependency on writing greatly differentiated me from everyone else my age, especially because they were all trying to "grow up" and I was stuck in the rut of childhood. At the time, however, I was only alone, and I wanted someone to talk to. Someone.

I also had never had a boy friend before. Not really, anyway. I was friends with the girls at my school, but I'd never had a boy friend, only a brother, and I wanted to know what that was like. That was another reason that contributed to Red's creation: needing a different experience than what I was used to.

September 14th, 2020, the creation of the Shadows took flight. They were inspired by a dream, and I was obsessed, back in the day, with sleep. I still don't know quite why, but sleep has always fascinated me, and back then was no exception. I developed that the Shadows should be hypnotics, and they should kidnap kids and hypnotize them into becoming sword-fighters... or something.

Listen, the idea was developing. Don't look at me like that. I was only 11!

I wasn't halfway through the day before I started to have internal conversations with my imaginary friends. Their personalities developed right before my very eyes; right as I was speaking with them! (Well, it was more like exchanging thoughts than speaking, because I had "grown up" enough not to talk aloud to imaginary people.) I decided that Red was going to be like Batman, all dark and scary and dangerous and angry. And he had leadership qualities, too. And he was a hypnotist.

Chris was a snarky nerd. He knew everything about everything and he would tell it to my face. I let him help me with my homework, although it wasn't much help when I didn't understand how to do the math problems and he wouldn't tell me how to do it because he didn't know either because we were technically sharing the same brain...

Yes. I was 11. I was lonely. Don't throw me under the bus.

Blake was tiny. I estimated he was the size of my tiny cousin. He seemed ignorant to whatever was going on around him, and he would babble on and on even when I wasn't listening (meaning that I would deliberately distract myself from online meetings because he was "talking"). He jumped and skipped everywhere, and his favorite interests included draining the coke from my soda can and eating all of my pizza.

But over time, as the plot of The Story developed, the plot of the characters developed, and so the plot of my three imaginary friends developed. Red wasn't just angry and horned and knowledgeable and dressed in black-- he was also caring and sympathetic. He wasn't entirely monstrous, and I would refine his character in my newer adaption of The Story, Eyes in the Dark. And Chris spoke with cadence instead of just spitting out whatever came to mind. He started to help me with my homework (because I started learning again). And Blake... well, Blake matured a little.

Long story short, Red, Chris and Blake went through three different stages. The Story, where they were all just monstrous and bloodthirsty (like villains should be, honestly); Eyes in the Dark, where they suddenly didn't have any limbs and floated around on shadows; and Playing with Shadows, where they were ultimately polished off. Their birthday is technically today, since today is the day I made them up 3 years ago, and the only reason I remember this day is because The Story was the first story I cared about. The first story I put passion into. The first story that touched my heart.

I think I might even remake Playing with Shadows soon. It deserves some reconciliation after the hate I've put on it.

So, there you have it. My childhood imaginary friend Shadows turn three years old today.

...Welcome to the mind of a ninth grader.