Matt and Mel

From “World Without Love ~ A Collection of Short Stories that Together Tell a Story (page 19):

(1960)

My sister was too young to play with.  Besides, she was a girl.  So I invented Matt and Mel.

Lots of kids have imaginary friends, but I had two.  And Matt and Mel were the best.  We played army and tag and olly-olly-oxen-free and we hid from each other and from everybody else and we had a great time together. 

Matt and Mel were especially good at hiding, which was understandable, given the fact that they were invisible, inaudible and imperceptible in every way.

The far-less-understandable thing about my imaginary friends was that when I invited them to dinner, my parents made room for them.

That surprised me. 

We placed empty chairs at the dinner table and set plates, forks and glasses in front of the empty chairs.  And no matter how much my sister complained that they weren’t real, Mom and Dad both pretended that Matt and Mel were right there with us. 

And we did that for quite some time at our house. 

Matt and Mel became so much a part of the family that Mom and Dad even made sure to remind me to tell Matt and Mel to fold their arms and bow their heads every evening when we knelt down for family prayer.

After a while, I had to let go of Matt and Mel, because to tell the truth, it took some of the fun out of it to realize that my parents were so comfortable with the concept of imaginary friends. 

It made me wonder if they had any.