friday share v5 (michael jackson edition)

when i was a very young child i spent hours in my basement making haunted houses. i covered my pool table with blankets making a fort, created obstacles for my childhood friends to go around, recruited my cousins to hide in places to scare my little sister and had the perfect soundtrack, michael jackson's thriller.

i would have the kids that were going through the haunted house wait at the top of the basement stairs as i ran downstairs, turned on the record player to set the mood with vincent price's eerie prelude to the legendary michael jackson song. and i listened to that song over, and over and over again.

i remember thinking how hard it was to line up the record player needle on the vinyl just so perfectly that it started just where i wanted it to.

fast forward a few years - michael jackson had recently released his much anticipated follow up to thriller with bad but unfortunately this was a time of my life that was pretty hard for me. my parents were going through a slightly messy divorce and i recall one specific instance and memory with my father that will forever be ingrained in my brain.

he had just picked me up from my mom's in his brand new porsche convertible which was ultra cool because it had a CD player in it and he was listening to michael jackson's newest album. i remember my mom and dad were having a disagreement as we were leaving because as we were pulling out of the driveway my father stopped the car dead in its tracks in the middle of the street only a few houses down.

man in the mirror was playing in the background and i could tell my dad was visibly upset. knowing what i know now as an adult i think it was guilt that he was putting his kids through seeing their parents break up. but as the car was stopped he started repeating the lyrics to man in the mirror to me, telling me that he was going to change, shaking the CD case at me while looking me square in the eye more serious than i had ever seen him.

i will never be able hear that song and not think of that moment, especially because he passed away shortly there after.

on a happier note i still have that same CD of his sitting on a shelf in my childhood bedroom.

i have so many memories of me dancing to PYT while folding jeans at the gap, fist pumping the air to dirty diana and snapping my fingers to beat it.

on this blog alone i have posted about the king of pop here, here and here, and just a few months back i couldn't have been more excited to see a simple michael jackson cover band because the idea of hearing his music live was a dream of me.

it all sounds so cheesy to me reading this, especially because over the last ten years or so how crazy michael jackson actually became. but i choose not to think of him hanging babies named blanket over balconies but in his red pants dancing to thriller.
i guess i didn't realize how sad i would actually be in hearing of his passing.

do you have a favorite michael jackson memory?