My Imaginary Friends - Hiroshi and Detlef

Illustrations of my imaginary heroes of cooperation and industrial design Detlef and Hiroshi.

Recently when I posted a video from 2004 LSS  reminded me of some of the things we used to do then.

The discussion brought to mind the backache of wrangling kids into car seats and some of the other issues. I recalled that I used an imaginary duo, Hiroshi and Detlef, who would be "very dissapointed" if my daughter didn't immediately get into the car seat.

I explained that the team had carefully designed the seat to my daughter's exact specifications, both of them embodying some of their home nations' characteristics. Hiroshi worked on the harmony of the overall form, but was sort of a smart alec, while Detlef wanted each fastener and buckle to be precise and was a hypochondriac.

My stories had the moral that, despite differences in food, clothing style, and temperament, they somehow made it work and the design team flourished.

Like most of my stories, despite good intentions, I quickly veered off into low comedy, telling my daughter about Hiroshi's fixation on 1970's stars such as Farah Fawcett and Lee Majors, or Detlef's rants about the ridiculous fetishization of Bavarian culture.

Obviously a two-year-old didn't catch that much, but, for a time, did think Hiroshi and Detlef were real people. 

I had the good fortune to warm up my cathode-ray, analog brain for future story projects as I explained sauerkraut sushi.

Like all good story characters, Hiroshi and Detlef served their purpose, helping strap that nipper down for safe travel by automobile.