His name is Alouishious Watson. His friends call him Al. That is if “AL” had any friends. And therein lies the problem. Alouishious had NO friends. Not one! Nada. Zip point ZERO! Well, you get the idea…NONE!
In fact, Al didn’t even have any non friends, or even enemies. Not having enemies is a good thing that we all should strive to achieve, but there were those lonely days when Al would go to the local sandlot with a bat, ball and glove and couldn’t find a single kid to play ball or even have just a catch with him.
Alouishious had seen the movie “Field Of Dreams” where it said “…if you build it they will come” and he always hoped that kids would magically show up and play with him. That never worked.
Then Al had an idea. “I’ll just make up, pretend, create my own friends in my mind and then I can have my “imaginary” friends to play with any time I wish.”
So that afternoon in the quiet of his room he conjured up his first friend…JOE!
Joe was a lot like Al and loved all the things that Al loved. Baseball, sports cars, computer games, and Joe disliked all the things that Al didn’t like also, such as baths, homework and being punished for breaking stuff.
Then one day Joe suggested that he and Al add another friend or two to their “Boys Only Club” and after lengthy discussion Al and Joe invited Ken and Mike to join.
Now Ken was a great ballplayer and wanted to play for the Orioles when he grew up and Mike was a wiz at math and wanted to be a scientist when he became an adult.
Over the course of the next few weeks, Ken taught Al how to play better baseball and Mike helped him with math so that his homework was lots easier.
Joe encouraged Al all along the way and kept telling Al…”Way to go”…”That’s great”….and “You’re doing a terrific job.”
Alouishious was quickly a changed young boy. He was better at almost everything and hadn’t even been punished for breaking stuff in weeks.
Then, on a sunny afternoon in summer Al went to the sandlot and there were a few kids there playing ball. Seeing Al with his ball, bat and glove, the biggest kid yelled…”Hey Al…wanna play?”
“I sure do!” Al yelled back and went out into the outfield with his glove.
After the game, as it was getting dark, the other boys introduced themselves to their new friend…”I’m Mike…I’m Joe… and he’s Ken and hey Al, you’re a pretty good ballplayer! See ya tomorrow.”

So you figure out the moral to this story. But whatever you decide, having friends is important, but so is BEING a friend!