I guess there is something to be said about the death of the pop legend. It seems that even people who were not huge fans, have memories that hold his songs in them. His music crossed over all barriers of race, gender and age. Where has that truly ever happened before?

At the same time that his music and talent seemed to be such a great blessing, it robbed him of a childhood and seemed to torment his spirit and life.

So what do I think of when I think about the pop legend? I think first about the fact that his Thriller album was the only record that we had in the daycare I attended at the age of 8 years old. I can remember plugging in these huge headphones and sitting there for hours just listening to the beats over and over. I remember some of his following cd’s and while I continued to listen throughout the years, nothing ever captivated like the Thriller album.

There are very few albums that are timeless or that you can introduce your kids to, but that is one of them. Thriller comes on every Halloween.

So after the music is the life. There is the drama with his family, relationships and physical alterations. There were the accusations of child molestation and over the top spending which added to the financial legal woes. As I sat watching a 60 minutes episode where they interviewed him about the molestation allegations during the time of media phrases like “wacko jacko” and “jesus juice”, I’m reminded of the opinion that I formed about it all way back then.

I listened to him talk and his mouse like effort in defending himself and concluded the allegations were false. What was he guilty of? To me it was pretty apparent that he was guilty of never being able to let go of the childhood he felt he missed out on. He never got over it and he never was able to appreciate the childhood he did have with the good and the bad. He was raised in a strict Jehovah Witness home and you can tell that from his upbringing his beliefs would’ve strayed from mainstream regardless his experience as a pop star.

So what happened when people could not understand his need to live his childhood as an adult? It got ugly, really ugly. He was one of those naive, wanting to believe the best in people, people. He had a childlike mind, and he could afford to have it. He could live every day at the Neverland Ranch and keep friends with the same mental state which did happen to be young boys. As far as the sex part of it, I believe he was almost one of those A-sexual people who was brought up associating sex as a nasty, sinful thing and therefore had a dysfunctional relationship with it. However it didn’t mean that he took advantage of his “friends” sexually.

Like most people, I pity his soul while it was here on earth because it definitely seems as if it was a wounded one. But out of that great despair came something even greater which was his music and his story that will live on forever.