iChat status message

I deleted the plist file as you suggested; did not help. Then I deleted every iChat plist file I could find; still did not help.

None of the help suggested so far has worked but I've learned something new. I took a look at my son's MacBook iChat and he has the same issue, that is, his iChat will not show the status of an on-line buddy if that buddy has chosen "Available" as the status message. So this issue is not unique to my Mac but it may be unique to all of the Macs in my house/on my network (4) although I can't figure out how or why that could happen unless it is a universal bug in this latest version of iChat. Any further thoughts would be appreciated.
One other question. You implied that you were not yet ready to advise Re-installing iChat just yet. How exactly could one go about re-installing just iChat. Isn't it an integral part of Leopard that would require re-installing all of Leopard or is there a way to just install individual programs from Leopard. I've looked at the installation options more than once over the years and that level of installation control did not seem to be available.

I guess I have lost my mind but I've now checked with a number of users, all of whom swear that when a buddy chooses the default "Available" status, it never shows under the name because, apparently, with the green light and no custom messages chosen, it is assumed that the status is available and therefore there is no need to show it. I could swear that I used to see "Available" under people's names up until last week but as I said, I must be losing my mind. At least I feel better that probably nothing is actually wrong with my Mac or iChat.