You know what I'm thinking.

R.I.P. Michael Jackson

I know it is easy to be cynical and jaded about Michael Jackson. I certainly was over the years. But, as I’ve confessed to my friends since yesterday, I was secretly hoping he would get himself together and stage a real come back.

In late January, 1984, I moved to New Jersey with my father after my parents’ divorce. I was seven years old. Until that time, my mother had raised me on Kenny Rogers and Eddie Rabbit albums. To this day Rogers is a guilty pleasure and my dad will never let me forget that I once had a dream Rogers was my father.

On my second night in this strange, new place I was being introduced to our neighbors and their daughters over pizza. The girls would become my first friends in Jersey and nearly constant playmates until we moved away when I was 16. Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video came on the tv in the other room.

You would have thought there was some sort of emergency. There was screaming and running and jumping.

My reaction, “Who’s Michael Jackson?”

There. I’ve made my second confession and I’m only halfway through this post.

I did not know who Michael Jackson was. But watching him on MTV that night was like an lightning bolt. It opened up a part of my brain that I didn’t know was there. This kind of music and dancing was unbelievable, unthinkable, inconceivable.

Admittedly, I was influenced by the excitement of my new friends. Soon after we were at K-mart with our parents and each granted the purchase of some toy or something we wanted. The older sister and I strategized. I nabbed the Thriller album and she the older Off the Wall. This way, there was more Jackson to go around.

I think I had Jackson fever for a year or two. Even after it wore off, I left its mark on me. I bought the cassette of Bad and believe I had Dangerous on cd. By the time the HIStory album was released when I was in high school things were already pretty weird in Jackson’s life. I didn’t know what to think about that. Still don’t, I guess. I bought the cd on some sort of nostalgia trip. I didn’t really hear about the last album, Invincible. I’m sure they put some sort of posthumous album together if there are any recordings. Maybe I will check it out.

I don’t really know how to conclude this post. It just felt like I should document this story for myself, since I have been telling it here and there over the years.

Above is a performance from the 1995 MTV Music Video Awards. It is a medley of some good songs and his best moves.