John Balcony

When I was little, I had an imaginary friend. His name was John Balcony. I honestly don't remember much about John Balcony, but I remember believing him to be real for a short period of time.

We had just made a big move from Buffalo, New York to Coventry, Connecticut. I was probably three years old at the time. I remember bits and pieces of the house in Buffalo. Apparently, my parent's bedroom had a balcony off of it that we were forbidden from because it was on the second floor. Also, one of the neighbor's kids that my brother played with was named John. I must have filtered that into John Balcony.

Once we were living in Coventry, my imaginary friend started taking shape. I would give long stories at the dinner table about John and his seven sisters. Each story grew more graphic than the one before. Soon, John's seven sisters started trying to kill him. The sisters started with just their finger nails, but went on to bigger and better things. Eventually, John was killed by his sisters with a machine gun. Ha-ha-ha, Fancy is such a funny little girl. Where does she get her imagination from?

Around the same time, I've been told that I was also drawing scary pictures. While other children my age were drawing pictures of their house with a big lemon sun in the corner, their family linked in hands out front like you would think a normal child would do, I was drawing pictures of big buildings on fire with people hanging out the windows screaming. I was too young to have the people hanging out the windows screaming, "help me"; but you would think someone would have gotten the picture.


As a side note: when it is it ever appropriate dinner conversation for a child to talk about their imaginary friend's sisters ripping his face off with their finger nails? And why would this be considered amusing? Also, I never tortured any animals, nor did I become a serial killer.