Current mood:	sad
Current music:	Billie Jean - (Michael Jackson)
Entry tags:	michael jackson

Michael Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)
It still doesn't quite seem real that Michael Jackson is gone. Though we all knew he was troubled, his passing was sudden. After having a day to think about it, it has brought some different feelings to mind.

When I was a child, my older family members used to talk about these touchstone moments, such as JFK's assassination, and how they always remembered exactly where they were when they heard the news.

I remember thinking this was odd, and that I doubted if I would remember such things. My memory has always worked a little differently than most people. As a child, I could go into great detail about Super Mario Bros., or my latest Science Fair project, but I couldn't always tell you what we had for lunch at school that day. (A fact which consistently infuriated my mother.)

Now, being a little older and wiser, I realize that I was wrong. My short-term memory has improved. I had an Arby's roast beef sandwich and fries for lunch today. (Mama would be proud.) In all seriousness though... I DO remember exactly where I was when major things happened. For example:


Princess Di: It was 1997, and I was 17 years old. We were at our house in Decatur. Keith had come over, and we were playing videogames in the garage which we had converted into a gameroom. My mom suddenly came in and said, "Ross... the Princess has died."

JFK Jr.: It was 1999, and I was 19. It was the first time I lived in Nashville (the second was 2005-2008), and it was in my early days of college. I was sitting at a table at South Street Cafe with my uncle in Nashville. There were televisions at the bar, and they announced on TV that his plane had gone down.

9/11: It was 2001, and I was 21. I was going to school at the University of North Alabama in Florence, AL. I had gotten up to go to Art History Survey class, and Dr. Kontar announced to us that a plane had crashed into the Twin Towers. She said she didn't know if the University was going to cancel classes today. (They didn't, and we ended up having classes as usual... though everyone was very distracted and congregated between classes to talk about it.) I remember thinking that it didn't seem real. I wondered in the moment if she was making some kind of weird joke or something, despite the fact that that would have been completely out of character for a scholarly professor with no penchant for inappropriate humor. It was just so incomprehensible that my first reaction was to grasp for some sort of denial mechanism.



Yesterday, when Michael Jackson died, I didn't know about it at first. Actually, I was completely oblivious. I was playing Bionic Commando: Rearmed on Xbox 360. Suddenly, I got a call on my cell phone. It was my little brother. I remember thinking it was unusual, because he's on Eastern time, and typically only calls me at night. My brother just recently graduated from high school, and he has a job working at Sears. He said he couldn't talk long, because he was calling me on his break. He asked me if I knew that Michael Jackson had died. It was one of those moments where like two seconds passed in real life, but it almost seemed like a minute of silence from the shock and confusion.

My little brother is not as outwardly sentimental as I am. I'm kind of an ol' softie at heart who loves to wax nostalgic, but he's a bit more stoic, like my stepdad. He didn't say it in so many words... but I knew he had called because he was saddened by the news. My brother, sisters, and I are all big fans of MJ's music. There's a lot more I could say about that, but I'll make a second post tomorrow.

Suffice it to say, I definitely think this is a "Where were you when...?" moment of our generation.