When I was first introduced to Michael Jackson, I was a skinny-skinny kid in the Midwest with long black braids and a precocious scowl. I wore a swimmingly-large, green tartan Catholic school uniform with cordovan penny loafers (with pennies in the slits). I fiercely clutched onto my laminated Thriller folder with the record-shaped top until it was shreds and scraps. I cut off the fingers of my winter gloves and bemoaned that my navy-blue Member's Only jacket was not a shiny, plastic red. I moon walked disastrously on my bedroom carpet when I was supposed to be fast asleep and I pined, pined for MTV just to get a glimpse of the Thriller video. Fifty thousand birds could fly overhead and immerse my head in deplorable, white goo and I would fail to flinch or notice if I saw Michael Jackson dancing; when he morphed into a thousand Fred Astaire(s) with rocket-feet, and ceased being human, the world stopped. We open-mouthed, drop-jawed watched. He connected generations of people throughout the world.
I can't believe he's effing dead. I am...Devastated.
