Car­ol Quash

I have nev­er man­aged to mas­ter the moon­walk, but I re­mem­ber, as a child, watch­ing the King of Pop slid­ing across the floor with such ease, that it was as though he had oiled the soles of his shoes, the floor, or both.

Even now that I am all grown up, I am still fas­ci­nat­ed by his per­for­mance of what to me was one of the best dance moves ever. Now, I have nev­er been a groupie, and I'm sure I will nev­er be, but I have to ad­mit that Michael Jack­son was tru­ly blessed with an un­for­get­table voice and danc­ing skills that are out of this world. The broth­er re­al­ly had it go­ing on when he mount­ed a stage.

His choice of flashy clothes and ac­ces­sories and the sig­na­ture se­quined glove cer­tain­ly would not have been mine, but Jacko made it work for him. As far as I am con­cerned, his tal­ent has nev­er been sur­passed by any oth­er en­ter­tain­er from his gen­er­a­tion or those that came af­ter. Up­on hear­ing of his death at such a ten­der age (ten years ago I would have con­sid­ered 50 to be old), I could not help but switch to nos­tal­gic mode.

I re­call look­ing at the cute lit­tle boy with the sweet, tiny voice grow in­to the not-so-cute man (his choice), with an equal­ly sweet voice, be­fore the eyes of the world. It's amaz­ing that the years have flown by so quick­ly. As con­tro­ver­sy fol­lowed him time and time again be­cause of some of his per­son­al choic­es, I nev­er al­lowed it to place a damper on my ap­pre­ci­a­tion of Michael Jack­son the en­ter­tain­er.

In ret­ro­spect, I can't help but smile at the nu­mer­ous school bazaars I at­tend­ed, where the cramped dis­cos (usu­al­ly held in two ad­join­ing class­rooms), would be filled with sweaty teenagers, my­self in­clud­ed, singing along and do­ing the en­tire Beat It and Thriller rou­tines. I am con­vinced that he was the in­spi­ra­tion be­hind many of the in­fa­mous "meet me by the gate" fights in­volv­ing sec­ondary school stu­dents, when The Girl is Mine was re­leased.

I may not be the own­er of posters, mu­sic videos, or a col­lec­tion of the mu­sic al­bums of this pop icon, but I can say with­out a doubt that I do know and ap­pre­ci­ate his mu­sic. And who knows, I may try to get the hang of the moon­walk as a trib­ute to the late, great Michael Jack­son.