As a child, I had two imaginary friends. Their names were Pokey and Puddy. They were both boys, although I was a girl child. I still am, more or less. I had a very large head and a skinny little body, but I outgrew them in time.

I phased both my imaginary friends out of my life about the time I was to start first grade.

I remember that those imaginary friends drew too much attention from my relatives who would ask me about them constantly, wanting me to tell them about their adventures. My family seemed to have a stronger belief in the imaginary duo than I did.

This became embarrassing for me.

So, I arranged to have one run over by an imaginary school bus, which, if you think about it, is an appropriate end, neither being real and no harm done. The other one, like an old soldier, just faded away. By the time I started the first grade, I had made a clean break with them.

Now grown up, I realize that those imaginary friends were as real as it gets.

As real as it gets is a phrase much like as good as it gets, a phrase that drives me nearly to despairing distraction. Oh heavenly god, this is all the good I am ever going to get? Really, this is as good as it gets? Then let's keep dancing...

I suspect the people who use that expression are trying to convey that very sense of anxiety which it causes me to feel. That is why I don't like it. Knock it off, already. If things are so bad, which is as good as it gets, fix it. Why cry in your beer? Why should cry in mine?

I found two faded black and white photographs of myself as a tyke. It appears that we, my parents and I, were once paupers in Siberia or some other really cold place and lived in an abandoned semi-tractor trailer. Anyway, there I was in a coat and bandana, standing gleefully beside a snowman, a pretty straightforward kind of snowman with stick arms, carrot nose, and pieces of coal for eyes. There is the possibility that the photo was actually of my mother.

Let's just say it was me in that photograph. In the first one, I am wearing gloves. In the other, the snowman is wearing the gloves, and I am not. I have no idea who took those pictures. I don't know who built that snowman. I don't even remember if I put my gloves on the twiggy arms, or if chancing upon someone else's unsuspecting snowman, some evil influence made me rob it of its hand warmers. It could have been my mother.

I don't know the correct sequence of the story told in those photographs. I put the photo without gloves on the snowman's fists in the album first, captioning it "Looking back, that snowman was the best friend I ever had." I wrote a caption for the second photo, showing the snowman wearing the hand warmers, "Hey, give me back my gloves."