••• CLICK HERE TO CATCH UP ON AMT328 •••
Harriet in Carentan, France is a real person, I think. She writes:
When I was about 11/12, my mom made up a boyfriend for me. He was called Tarquin and she would do impressions of him and the kinds of loving things that this, entirely fictional, person had said to me and these impressions were always done in a high-pitched voice with lots of flutterings of hands and overly posh accents.
She even carried this bizarre joke on into my teens while I had real boyfriends and girlfriends. According to her these were insignificant relationships and that Tarquin was my one true love who I would eventually marry.
I’m in my 20s now and fortunately she has stopped mentioning Tarquin, and I had managed to forget about it all until I listened to episode 327. I’d thought it was just something weird my mom did, but now I’m wondering if in fact it’s a common joke for parents to make about their children and that most people just never mention it. I’d be interested to know if any of your other listeners have written in to say that their parents invented relationships for them.
Anyone, or is this just a me-and-Harriet thing?
• ALBUMS • CLASSIC EPISODES • BOOK • iTUNES • SOUNDCLOUD • FAQ •
iPHONE APP • ANDROID APP • FACEBOOK • TWITTER • YOUTUBE • MERCH
Tags: embarrassment, parents, pretend boyfriends
Answer Me This! Podcast 
December 9, 2015 at 8:30 am |
I had a pretend girlfriend, invented by my mum and dad, called Sophie. My parents told my grandparents about her and they didn’t realise she was not real. Then when my grandmother met my actual girlfriend Helen she thought it was Sophie and called her Sophie all afternoon.