Mr. Johnson

I've often listened to my friends share stories about their children (usually daughters) and the imaginative scenarios and dialogues spawned from their young minds involving imaginary characters. After recently witnessing one of the boys' little friends engage in such dialogue about imaginary horse friends, I told her mother that I've never observed my boys playing with or talking to any imaginary friends of their own. I recalled having imaginary friends when I was young (mine were named Kiwi and Piwi), but as far as I could tell, Caleb and Joshua hadn't yet tapped into that realm. I shrugged it off--after all, who needs an imaginary friend when you've got a twin brother? Well, I've since been informed that imagination is used as an indicator of intelligence when administering IQ tests to preschoolers. D'oh!

Just as I was about to write the boys' IQ off as a lost cause (just kidding, although I did become slightly concerned about their apparent lack of imagination), I overheard them talking to someone named "Mr. Johnson". They were standing at the screen window and appeared to be conversing with someone outside in our backyard. I checked, and no one was in our backyard. "Hey Mr. Johnson, where are you? Did you go to work, Mr. Johnson?" they called out. "Mr. Johnson! Come inside! Go to your room, Mr. Johnson!" And so on and so forth. We don't personally know anyone with the surname of Johnson, so I was quite puzzled about where they even came up with this name. Joe said that there's a blue muppet named Mr. Johnson who appears in a skit on one of our Old School Sesame Street DVDs, but when we asked Caleb what color Mr. Johnson is, he told us, "Mr. Johnson is yellow". Hopefully the boys will continue to fill us in on details about Mr. Johnson, other than the fact that he goes to work and is yellow. Meanwhile, I can be at ease knowing that our boys bear the marks of intelligent preschoolers after all ;)