Remember the Time . . .

I was born when my parents were very young. Too young.

They hadn't decided if they were ready to be parents or even what they wanted to do with their lives, so they both decided to go into the military.

That left me living with my grandparents where I spent lots of time being the shamelessly spoiled only grandchild and little sister to my Uncle (my Mom's little brother), who was only 2 years older than me, and was my unparalleled hero.

When my parents came home, much more grown up and ready to be parents, we went to live on our own and began our life traveling all over the planet for Uncle Sam. My Uncle always remained my hero. He was always like the big brother I never had.

Over the years, he and I exchanged long distance phone calls and letters, mostly written in crayon since we were both so young . . . eventually they morphed into exchanging audio cassettes (remember those) of each other's voices when my family moved overseas due to a military PCS. This was before the age of cell phones and it was way too expensive for us to call. We were just so "hip," no one could tell us anything, LOL.

When I was thirteen, my uncle died suddenly and shockingly without warning. My family was living in Germany at the time and we had to fly home quickly and haphazardly in order to make it in time for the funeral. It was just about the saddest day of my life.

At that funeral, we prominently displayed my Uncle's most prized possession: a shiny vinyl of Michael Jackson's album Off the Wall. We even danced a little bit on the church lawn. It was wonderful and terrible all at the same time. Every single day of his life, my Uncle thought he was Michael Jackson. He never walked, he glided every where he went, had a shiny Michael Jackson jacket, and proceeded to dress up as the Scarecrow from The Wiz every. single. Halloween.

I know this is sort of a morbid post, and I really don't mean to bring everyone down, but this is the first thing that came into my mind when I heard that Michael Jackson passed away yesterday. Weird, no?

I certainly hope they are both resting in peace today . . . and perhaps Uncle can show Michael a few dance moves. ;-)


Until next time . . .