“This is so totally like you,” Kimberly sighed, taking a sip of her fruit smoothie.
We were both standing on a small bridge at a local park. Children were still playing as the sun began to set over the buildings and houses that formed the horizon line. The sky was dotted with clouds starting to turn orange.
I was sipping a mocha, and I really had no excuses for her.
“I know,” I said as I swallowed a sip of caffeinated mocha goodness. Coffee at sunset was really not the best idea.
“Do you think you will ever be able to start and finish an idea, Mr. Smith?”
“Of course!” I replied,”I just can’t apparently start and finish projects reliably in any predictable order.”
Kimberly still called me “Mr. Smith.” I guess it just kinda of stuck. We both watched the orange deepen on the clouds. There was a soft breeze. I heard someone fall off their bike – that sound of skidding bike tires, followed by the thunk of the bike and rider hitting the ground, and the signature rattle of chain. We both turned to see – healthy morbid curiosity at work – and it was a girl. She got up, as her friends circled around to make sure she was OK.
“So,” she continued,”What does the plan look like now?”
“About like her bike,” I answered. She smiled dryly. I continued,”You know, I went to Theodore Roosevelt Island the other day. There’s a memorial there. Some things changed for me that day.”
“Really? Like what?”
“I don’t know exactly. The way I look at our media, my family, my goals, has all been influenced by that journey. There are goals I want from this life, and I want to be sure to reach for them…always.”
“But don’t you think you need to be able to start and finish a project in order to reach a goal?”
“Yes, but not how you think. I held a meeting the other day with a couple friends. I know from some previous self-awareness training that I am a fire starter. That is what I do best. I can finish projects – but it is extremely taxing for me. To tackle a big project, I think it would be better to bring in other people – people who are good at finishing projects. “
“Hmmm,” Kimberly thought, “who are the other people?”
“I don’t know yet. I don’t even know the projects yet. But I know that I can start as many as I like… and that’s what I intend to do. The ones that pick up momentum will be the ones I see through.”
Kimberly chuckled with uncertainty, “I don’t know, Mr. Smith.”
“I do,” I said. And I took the final sip of my coffee. I wondered if the last sip was really mostly saliva, like I heard when I was a kid? I think my cousin told me that, or maybe I heard it in gradeschool.
“I will see you in a couple weeks. I will have an update,” I concluded.
“OK.”
“But next time, I want to hear more about you, too. I don’t want to do all the talking anymore.”
“Really,” she said calmly. Then she turned to face me,”Would you believe me if I said I was an extension of you?”
“Of course,” I replied, “I created you.”
“Exactly. I am a literary device.”
“I don’t kiss literary devices, Dr. Thegan.”
“Actually, you do, Mr. Smith. You kissed an extension of yourself,” Kimberly said smugly as she took a sip of her drink.
“Ewww!” I really, REALLY hadn’t thought of it that way, until just now.
Kimberly could not contain herself. She spit a mouthful of smoothie out over the bridge and laughed. The smoothie bits twinkled in the glow of the setting sun. Damn. Score one for the imaginary friend. So, my imaginary self and imaginary-therapist-gone-imaginary-friend enjoyed the final imaginary moments of that imaginary sunset in the imaginary park. It was the ending of another fabulous, albeit somewhat creepy, imaginary day.
The Imaginary End.