To Be or Not to Be?

I have an ongoing mental dilemma that has gotten more persistent lately in regards to P. It's a battle in my mind as to whether I encourage his imagination or tone it down a little. Now give me a minute to explain before you answer that with, "Of course you encourage his imagination you moron!".
P gets very creative with things he likes. Since he was about 2 years old, he's loved all of his stuffed animals. I'm not at all opposed to boys playing with dolls but he's never had any. So his stuffed animals kind of take that place. He treats them as babies sometimes and pets other times. Today we went to a kid's clothing store where he insisted on bringing in his baby elephant and its bottle. He was walking around, talking to it and feeding it its bottle, and some boys laughed at him. He had no clue they were laughing AT him and played up feeding his elephant, talking to them about her. He thought it was great that they were laughing because he thought he was being funny and I didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise.
My dilemma is that he'll be starting Kindergarten in the Fall and there are a lot of mean kids in school. I know this because I was bullied a lot as a kid (and as a teenager). No matter how much I tried to fit in I couldn't. I would rather go through that again myself than to have P go through it. He's sensitive and I don't want kids teasing him, making him cry. Nor do I want to squash his imagination and have him fit in a "box", which happens in education anyways these days.
See my dilemma? I truly hope that he is like my brother, where he can march to his own drummer but (most) everyone finds it endearing. My brother was friends with everyone in school and never had to work at fitting in with anyone because he didn't care. I pray that the same happens with P and that all this worrying is a non-issue. Ah, the worries of parenting!