Remember your best childhood friend, the one you could play with all day and tell your most cherished secrets to because they would never reveal them to others? Your bestie was always there when you needed a connection, 24/7, to cater to your every need.
That’s because your best friend was imaginary.
For anyone who thinks it’s weird or out of the ordinary for a child (and maybe a few years past childhood) to have an imaginary friend, Jay Ellis would like to sit down and have a conversation with you. Because: A: He did have a best friend growing up; B: His imaginary friend was a part of his life for years; and C: It helped shape him into the man he is today.
Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)? Adventures in Boyhood. Image: Amazon.
Chronicled in his new memoir, Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)? Adventures in Boyhood is a poignant romp through the Insecure alum’s childhood that reveals the actor and artist he’s become today.
Born as the only child in a military family, Ellis moved around a lot, becoming the perpetual new kid in different settings. “I went to 12 schools in 13 years. My dad was in the Air Force,” he tells EBONY. Influenced by the news and pop culture happening in the late eighties and nineties, from the crack epidemic and the O.J. Simpson trial to a slew of Spike Lee films, imaginary friend Mikey was born.
A cross between Dwayne Wayne from A Different World and Will Smith from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Mikey reflected the strong Black male influences Ellis watched while growing up. He says, “I think my young brain was trying to process all of those things and make sense of the world around me so that it didn’t shut me down or make me afraid.”
During the Covid pandemic, Ellis reacquainted himself with Mikey while rummaging through old photos at his parents’ home. “My mom would tell me stories, and my dad would chime in, and I found myself just wanting to write about the childhood adventures that I went on,” he says, “the lessons that I learned … creativity and imagination and play and how we all need that in our life.”
Now a father himself in a world where every scary and horrific moment is splashed across screens and social media, Ellis has an even clearer picture of why kids today need an imaginary friend. “My daughter has an imaginary friend—it’s actually an imaginary cousin named Jack,” he shares. “For any child, this is their way of processing whatever they’re going through, good or bad, in their life.”
Ellis says that no matter our age, we should listen to and honor that encouraging voice inside our heads. “I think we all have a form of self-talk. How it manifests is wildly different. I hope people take away that it’s healthy to have that,” he says.
Ellis hopes his book will encourage communication and the importance of imagination and creativity for our mental health. “Imagination, creativity and play yield freedom for us. And we lose that along the way as we get older; we become adults, and the world gets serious … but if you lose that, you also lose a little bit of hope, a sense of belief in what you can achieve or that life can be different.”
