Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)?
Adventures in Boyhood
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Jay Ellis, star of HBO’s Insecure, tells the story of growing up with an imaginary best friend you will never forget—part Dwayne Wayne from A Different World, part Will Smith from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air—in this hilarious, vulnerable memoir.
“So funny, poignant, and personal. I loved this and you will, too.”—Mindy Kaling, author of Why Not Me? and Nothing Like I Imagined
What to do when you’re the perpetual new kid, only child, and military brat hustling school to school each year and everyone’s looking to you for answers? Make some shit up, of course! And a young Jay Ellis does just that, with help from his imaginary friend, Mikey.
A testament to the importance of invention, trusting oneself, and making space for creativity, Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)? is a memoir of a kid who confided in his imaginary sidekick to navigate parallel pop culture universes (like watching Fresh Prince alongside John Hughes movies or listening to Ja Rule and Dave Matthews) to a lifetime of birthday disappointment (being a Christmas-season Capricorn will do that to you) and hoop dreams gone bad. Mikey also guides Ellis through tragedies, like losing his teenage cousin in a mistaken-target drive-by and the shame and fear of being pulled over by cops almost a dozen times the year he got his driver’s license.
As his imaginary friend morphs into adult consciousness, Ellis charts an unforgettable story of looking inward to solve to some of life’s biggest (and smallest) challenges, told in the roast-you-with-love voice of your closest homey.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Insecure actor Ellis recounts amusing anecdotes from his "behaviorally challenged" childhood in this briskly funny debut memoir-in-essays. After posting an ode to his mischievous imaginary friend, Mikey, on Instagram at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ellis received a flood of responses, confirming his suspicion that "the most creative people on the planet probably all had imaginary friends growing up." Using Mikey's unconditional encouragement as a jumping-off point, Ellis shares freewheeling stories from his early life in the 1980s and '90s, which saw his family move regularly across the South and Southwest due to his father's Air Force career. He covers family road trips, the time he threw his Magic Johnson Converse sneakers in a rain gutter to prove they could "float like Jordans," and an afternoon when Mikey encouraged him to ask his third grade homeroom teacher to be his girlfriend. Throughout, Ellis underlines how Mikey's confidence helped him navigate an "uncontrollable and often unsafe" world, lending depth to an otherwise riotously funny series of self-reflections. Even readers unfamiliar with Ellis's acting work will be delighted.
