How About That Thing?

So, here’s an interesting game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon for you.

Recently, I read the book I Will Kill Your Imaginary Friend for $200 by Robert Brockway.

To make a long senopsis short, the book is about two sets of characters.

One of them is Ivan: a man who can see other people’s imaginary friends, and decides to make a career out of killing them for the adults who created them as kids, but can’t figure out how to let go. The second is Kay, and her delightful friend, Eddie Video: an imaginary friend version of some internet show I don’t think exists IRL… Except he stops being cute, and starts convincing her to cut herself and hurt other people. Hilarity ensues.

I’m going to be totally honest with you, dear reader. This book is probably the best thing I’ve read all year. Granted, 2026 is still very young, and most of what I’ve been reading lately has consisted of Dungeon Crawler Carl books for me, and whatever board book my two-year-old wants me to read, but even then, it has been a long time since I’ve found a book with a story that’s made me want to just dedicate my entire time to reading it, and nothing else.

Reading this book not only entertained me, but it also got me thinking about a lot about imaginary friends. It even reminded me of my own imaginary friend.

I’ll spare you the gory details, but when I was seven, I had an imaginary friend by the name of Smokebomb. Basically just imagine the first thing that comes to mind when you think ninja, revise NOTHING, and you have Smokebomb in review. If that doesn’t help…

Smokebomb talked to me exclusively through a toy phone I used to have when I was seven. And ninety-nine percent of the time, when he talked to me, he’d tell me all about how his latest assignment ended up going horribly wrong and/or blew up in his face. I guess the idea of an idiot ninja was hilarious to seven-year-old me.

Once I got done with reliving the good old days of phones being things with buttons and hurr-durr ninjas being a novel concept before Naruto came along and ruined it for everyone, I remembered one of my favorite shows at the time. It was a little toon by the name of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.

Foster’s Home was a show about a sort of homeless shelter for the imaginary friends who served their purpose, but couldn’t disappear into the ether. An old woman known simply as Maddam Foster collected all these wayword friends, and helped them find homes with children who, let’s face it, weren’t creative enough to make their own.

Was I a little too old for this show? Eh, probably. I was a senior in high school when this first came out, and I wasn’t exactly getting younger. Did I watch it anyway? You better believe it. There were a lot of Cartoon Network originals I watched despite my age, and Foster’s Home was definitely one of them.

And of course, when I got to thinking about this show, I immediately got to thinking about one of my favorite episodes. And that episode, simply put, was Seeing Red.

The episode centers primarily around this loveable oaf.

This is Red. He was dreamed up by the main character’s older brother as a way of diverting his imaginary friend’s attention so he could do what big brothers do best: wail on their little brothers mercilessly for the single solitary reason of them being little brothers. I guess. I don’t know, I was an only-child, but a lot of friends who were little brothers assured me Terrence was pretty accurate to the bigger brother archatype. Right down to being brick fucking stupid.

Unfortunately, the only thing brick fucking stupider than Terrence is Red himself. Hell, if you look at his design, he’s basically a brick with arms. So, what’s Terrence’s excuse?

Somehow, he interprets “smash Blue” to mean “sniff flowers” when he’s first created. And glitches like this, ladies and gentlemen, is why you weight a few months before buying a new PC. But once Terrence patches up all the glitches in Red’s operating system, the hunt is on.

Only for Blue to trick him over and over again into getting beat up. Whether it be getting stung by bees, rammed by unicorns who don’t appreciate being called girly (the 2000s were like that), or getting eaten by a giant sea monster named Cyrus… I wonder who imagined that guy? Well, anyway, the point is Red finds himself questioning his existence.

Why am I here? Was I only created for malice and conflict? Having failed at my quest to “smash Blue”, can I even call myself a friend of Terrence? For if my purpose was to smash, and I have in turn been smashed, would it not be safe to assume that I have failed at life?

Then he becomes buddies with Blue, beats up Terrance, and everything is all hunky dorie. Furthermore, you never see Red at any point in the show ever again, say for maybe a background cameo every now and then.

Honestly, I have no idea why I gravitated to this episode like I did. On the surface, it seems like such a basic bitch premise. Dude creates monster, sends it after the hero, the hero defeats… Oh dear god, it reminded me of Power Rangers, didn’t it?

Well, for whatever reason, this episode was one of my favorites. It taught the valuable lesson that even a total blockhead like Red can redeem himself and be a force for good when pointed in the right direction. It taught us that some ideas can be destructive in the wrong hands, but entertaining in the hands of others. And…well… It’s also possible I liked Red because he was a world-class hurr-durr, and hurr-durr was my jam in the 2000s.

Oh, and something something Kevin Bacon. I guess.