Mike and me.

So my mother calls me and leaves this message on my voicemail, "Your youth is officially over. Michael Jackson is dead. Wondering if you'd heard."

Of course, I'd not been able to answer her call because I was fielding millions of phone calls and text messages and emails and facebook poignance. It's an understatement to say that our generation is taking this kinda rough. We all have a lot to share about our relationship with Mike.

When I was six years old, the only thing on my list to Santa was Thriller. I cared about nothing else, and talked about it incessantly at school. When the flat, roughly 12" x 12" square appeared in tacky paper beneath the tree, I swore it was something else. I had built it up in my mind to be as big as my entire torso, enough to actually wrap my arms around. My sister, Louise had worked at Camelot Music in Bel-Air Mall and brought it home for me. To tell you the truth, I actually spotted it in a bag hanging on her bedroom doorknob prior to the Big Day, but couldn't really believe it was actually about to be mine to behold.

I learned to use our multiple record players at around four years old, having been taught how to lay the needle down ever-so-gingerly on the smooth line in between songs. Albums were something to be handled like china, and respected. I remember learning to hold them between my finger tips on the edges, fearing for my life if I dropped one. Already in heavy rotation at this age were Earth, Wind & Fire's Greatest Hits Vol. 1, Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 Fool on the Hill, and Prince Controversy. I spent countless hours alone in my room listening to these and learning every little bit of the space between notes and the scant breath here and there. But these were my family's records, and Thriller was mine. All mine.

I gazed at Michael with the big kitty and fell in love with him. Spending so much time alone in my room with this record at such a young age, he was literally one of my friends. Thriller always scared me a little, but I did huge can-can girl kicks to the bit he ripped off from Manu Di Bango in Wanna Be Startin Somethin. I dreamed over he and Paul McCartney (as my sister had taught me all of the Beatles' names and their reverence not long ago), and wished I was the girl they fought over. Human Nature cultivated my first fantasies of a big city, and Lady In My Life just made be feel warm. I honestly felt I knew him. I decided he was my boyfriend, and when I announced it to my mother she discouraged me. So I decided he was my cousin, and I told everyone at school.

Whenever someone's sister or brother would buy the album, I was notified. The kids in first grade at St. Ignatius in Mobile, AL were mystified. I received them graciously. And today I heard from schoolmates that I haven't spoken to in years.

Yeah, we shared a last name. But the intimacy I had with this first album of my very own can only describe the void a child can fill spending countless hours alone in her room, gazing out of the window and petting her Doberman, waiting to go play in the graveyard.