Location, Location, Location

Mood: Reflective
Music: Gone Too Soon, Michael Jackson

I was six years old in August 1977. I was outside, playing with neighborhood friends, running up and down the block with the freedom children had then. I didn't have to stay in view of my house. My mother wasn't even outside.

A house was being built at the end of our block, and the construction people had dug the basement and begun to build up the foundation. My friends and I were double dog daring each other to walk the edge of the foundation, and I was taking my turn. I teetered ten feet over the mud pit below, left foot, then right, then left, arms spread out as if, should I have fallen, I would simply have started to flap my arms and fly.

My sister came and found me, and told our little group that people on the radio had just said Elvis Presley had died. I was only six, but I knew who Elvis was. Everybody knew. My parents tended to play other records in the house: Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick and Sam Cooke and Shirley Caesar. Still, something about the announcement broke up our play and we all headed home.

That is my earliest "where were you" memory - the first time I can recall exactly what I was doing when something big happened in the world. I don't remember the Vietnam War ending when I was two, and I don't remember Nixon resigning when I was four. Elvis was first.

From there are my other where were yous. I remember sitting in our family room watching the hostages who had been held in Iran deplane. I remember my mother waking us up early one morning to watch Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer get married. And with quite a few events in between, I also remember laying in bed one morning, watching news coverage of Princess Diana's death.

So of course I'll always remember waking up to find out that Farrah Fawcett had succumbed to her battle of cancer, and feeling melancholy and sad, looking at photos of her on the internet and realizing I'd never paid attention to how very pretty she was. And I'll always remember the craziness later in the day, when a friend instant messaged me with the news that Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital.

I could do an entire series of posts just on the memories I have that play to a soundtrack of his songs. I could go into detail on where I was, exactly, the first time I heard some of those songs, the times I was almost late for school because I was listening to Beat It or Man in the Mirror on the radio for the first time, and I wouldn't leave my room until the song was finished.

And I know I'll remember standing at my kitchen island, cutting up vegetables, when my son came upstairs to say he'd gotten a text that Michael Jackson had died, and wanted to know if it was true. I'll remember firing up my laptop, hearing my cell phone ring as the screen blazed to life. I'll remember saying to my son, "If that's Gwen, that means it's true."

It was Gwen, who had just read the news from the Associated Press feed. She said just, "Oh, my God!" when I answered.

That's the story I'll tell when one day, perhaps at a party, when someone asks me where I was. We'll all trade stories, all talk about how much it impacted us, or didn't.

I'll always remember.

Writing.

A story "came in". From nowhere! Very exciting.

Well, not really from nowhere. A concept has been floating around my head for a while, and while I was driving the other day, the plot materialized out of thin air. Now I'm working on pulling it out and onto paper.

Feels great.