Remembering and Misremembering: Marking Time with Michael Jackson and Crissy

Fall of 1983: We were running out to the playground. Crissy had her boom box in her hand and we scoured the playground for a place to ourselves—but not too far away from others. We did want to be noticed. So we found a place on the jungle gym. She balanced the boom box on the top of the bars and pressed play. There was the music and then that voice to remember. “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” waved through the air. We laughed and jumped around to the music. The warm fall air, filled with the smell of dried leaves, lingered around us as we danced and played.

June 25-6, 2009: When I heard that Michael Jackson was dead, I was sitting at Atomic with Angela. We were talking about our research on Guatemala. I didn’t believe it at first. I looked at the CNN headline and just sort of thought it was a joke. I still don’t really believe it’s true to be honest with you. Part of me wants it to be a big publicity stunt for his great comeback. As I write this, though, it brings back lots of memories of growing up. I’ve been in an '80s nostalgia mode these days, so this just tipped me over the edge.

Remembering December 2, 1983: Crissy, and I eagerly awaited the world premiere of the “Thriller” video. Crissy was my best friend in the 5th and 6th grade. She was my first best friend. I remember being excited that the video would premiere on Friday Night Videos because my family did not have cable. Having it on Friday Night Videos meant that I could actually see the video for the first time when the rest of the country saw it for the first time. It was a time to celebrate, because not only was the video premiering, it was also less than a week before my birthday. For the occasion my parents let me invite Crissy over to spend the night.

That night has been significant for me—and not just because we watched “Thriller” for the first time. I was in the sixth grade and my family and I were living in the farmhouse in Defiance, Missouri. It is a house full of terrible memories, but that night—that night was one of the best nights I had in that house. I had a wood stove in my room and I remember that it was nice and warm—so toasty. Our firewood supply was often touch and go and luckily we had enough before our next trip into the woods. (Yeah, it was the sole source of heat for us.) So Crissy and I spent the evening doing all those things girls typically do. It was rare for me, because I almost never invited friends over to my house. My father was just too unpredictable with his drinking to trust bringing friends over. But this was an exception. It was near my birthday and it was Michael Jackson. I took the risk.

We had so much fun that night. Crissy and I played games, did each other’s make-up and hair, gossiped about the boys we liked at school, and, of course, talked about how awesome the video was going to be. By the time Friday Night Videos came on, we were poised with our popcorn—nearly ready to jump out of our skin with excitement. We watched it on the small tv in my room, because we wanted to digest it by ourselves, without parents. Crissy loved Michael Jackson. It was on the playground out school that I first heard Thriller. We were in our own little world when we listed to it at recess. When I would go to her house, she would pull out her album, opening it up to look at the full-length photo of Jackson that lay within it. White suit, cool hair. As the album played on her turntable, we would read the sleeve over and over again—memorizing the lyrics and all the acknowledgments.

June 25-26, 2009: So I’m sitting here listening to Larry King Live with all the famous people talking about the life of Jackson and their experiences with him. It’s strange, but I get frustrated with these obsessive tributes to famous people who die. It makes me feel disconnected from my own emotional responses to those figures. It becomes less and less meaningful as the news shows try to capture the moment as it is happening. There is no time to mull things over, to let yourself digest, not only the person’s death, but what such an event means to your own life. And it is an event. Michael Jackson was not just another person, his image was no longer his own. And if any of you are like me, you build your memories around those images, those events. Like it or not, popular culture is a marker for all of us. It reminds us of our immortality. It provides a way for us to remember events in our own lives—events that might otherwise melt away into the recesses of our minds. Oh, how I am a product of the 1970s and 1980s.

Without the marker of Thriller and the video’s premiere, I might not still remember the deeper things that were going on in my life in that period between 1982 and 1984. Or at least I would never be able to remember that time with the mixture of joy, bitterness, dark humor, and hope that currently defines those years for me. At same time, I find myself creating a narrative around big events, even if they don’t exactly align in real time.

Misremembering December 8, 1980: Here is how I always tell the story of what happened the day that John Lennon died: It was my birthday and we were living in the farmhouse. I threw a big birthday party with most of the girls from my class. I remember my mom glued to the television that evening, crying. I felt sad for my mom and sad that Lennon was dead. I just knew something big was happening even if at that moment I was more consumed with my friends and the drama of being a young girl than the news reports.

But that story is now all mixed up for me. The timing is all wrong. As I was reflecting on the date of when I watched “Thriller” with Crissy, it didn’t jibe with my memory of events during our time living in the farmhouse. If it was 1983 when I was sitting there with Crissy, watching “Thriller” and John Lennon died in 1980—the day of my 9th birthday, then that means we were not living in the farmhouse. We were living in the mobile home in Bonne Terre, Missouri. But that memory is so vivid. So clear. I see my mom on the couch in the living room in the farmhouse, crying and pacing. I see myself watching her from the doorway leading into the living room, leaving my friends in the back rooms on occasion in order to check in on her. It is so tangible, so real.

It was one of those dependable memories—until today, June 25-26, 2009. The story is no longer possible and it blurs into the many memories of that time in my life. Those memories are like helium balloons floating in the sky. They float and fluctuate, some fly away out of sight, some bump into other memories. Most are not attached to solid ground and I try to catch their strings to grasp onto something—anything that has coherency. But I find myself making and remaking those stories. Clumping events together that I know did not happen together in real time. All those memories of moving back and forth between California and Missouri are one big streak of movement with anecdotes making pock marks along Interstate 70. And then the years between the trailer in Bonne Terre and the farmhouse in Defiance merge, conflate, and push there way in and out of my consciousness.

Remembering December 2, 1983: After watching the video and talking about the dancing, the storyline—just completely dissecting each moment of the video, we got ready for bed. We stayed up, talking into the night about almost everything. It was the first time I felt I had a real friendship, that I had let the walls of my secret world down to share with somebody. Up until that time, I never really had a close friend. I just lived in my own world, which consisted largely of books. That night was the first time I ever told anybody that my dad was an alcoholic and that he was prone to fits of rage. She, then, shared with me her own struggles at home. I do not feel comfortable revealing those struggles, but suffice it to say, it made me realize that I was not alone. Although I would retreat into my shell about a year later when our friendship dissolved (it just couldn’t survive the transition from grade school to junior high), that moment was an awakening. It opened up something inside of me. It is a soft memory that rests outside of the many jagged and sharp memories that define that time in my life.

June 26, 2009: I keep looking at the dates of my life in Missouri, calculating the years and where I was living and when. It is messy. My memory of that time is full of mistakes and errors. I keep leaping for a string to attach at least one memory to solid ground. I’d like to think that the “Thriller” night is one such memory, but who knows. Right now, though, I don’t care. It is real. And it is me. It is how I can (and want to) mark the trajectory of my life. And I will take Crissy and Michael Jackson with me in this memory journey.