"What do you want for Christmas my child?"
"I want a robotic head, a white glove and a family of chimpanzees!"
I was thirteen when Michael Jackson’s ‘Off the Wall’ came out, and one of my clearest memories was standing in the bathroom trying to reach that pitch in ‘Rock with you’. Then there was that time he did the moonwalk on stage, and I practised – and failed – for weeks.
I remember having Michael’s poster on the wall above my bed – the white suite one with a tiger – and dancing around the house listening to his music at full blast whenever dad wasn’t at home.
Mum even joined in on the boogie once.
She wasn’t too bad a dancer.
But as much as I like hanging onto my past (possibly to the point of suffocation), I’m not really interested in buying golf buggies airbrushed with the likeness of Michael dressed as Peter Pan or portraits of him dressed as royalty. Instead I prefer to keep the part of him as I remember myself; proud, talented and black (although in reality I've always been as black as he currently is).
Ms Bubbles-stop-that! M.
