1969...maybe 1970...Ed Sullivan on Sunday night TV...us kids scooching around...

"Hey uhh...youse kids!" My grandmother diverted our attention holding her cigarette with an ash badly in need of flicking..."Looka the little colored boy on TV!"

We watched...

"See that little colored kid on TV? He's making his mother and father a lot of money! All youse make your mother is 'scoombodie'!" (yet another Italian slang word for "nuts")

We watched him and saw the song and dance routine and figured..."whats the big deal? We could do that if we FELT like it!"

But there he was and for the next couple of generations he has always been there. We never could do what he did even if we DID feel like it!

Pretty much for the last 40 years from the minute you can remember a song he was there for you. He taught you to dance and sing and that meant he could teach you that life had an escape route. You could dream you weren't you for a little while and get away from yourself. But when you came back you realized you were ok just the way you are.

You thought he'd always be there, like you can't imagine things without him, like him or not.

He grew up physically but he never grew up or old. He never really got to be a little kid. The funny thing is as a little boy he was probably more mature than he became as a grown man. He went from an old soul boy to a man child.

As you got older, sometimes you couldn't relate to him anymore because he seemed to get younger. You came to realize you didn't know him as well as you thought you did.

You tried not to think about that and you just hoped what he became as a person was mostly just him trying to get you to understand him thru his music. No one really understood him but he made you happy while he searched for himself.

When he became larger than life it made him rich in money, so much so he thought he could never spend it all completely and he was right. Now he needed no one. He was free of his Dad who tried to make a soft boy a hard man. He didn't need him anymore and now he could try to forget him and make himself the childhood the old man stole from him.

Now he was a little kid free to roam the candy store and do all the things he always wanted to do. He could make young friends and be generous. He could have sleep overs, sing songs, play games and read stories. He became in his older life all the things he wished he was when he was a boy. The kids enjoyed it and so did he, no matter how many people picked on him about it. For him there was nothing dirty or inappropriate about it and couldn't understand how others felt there was.

For him, one thing was important, a kid needed to be a kid. But what he also forgot was a grown up also needed to be a grown up. When grown ups befriend little kids in this scary day in age, they open themselves up to many things. But sometimes you can trust the world to do the right thing only so much.

When he died the other day, he died only in body. The truth was he died 4 years ago when walked out of the court room declared not guilty for harming a young boy. He was free of the charges but now he was trapped in himself. He now knew he couldn't play with the other kids anymore because he was really 46 years old. That in of itself killed him that day.

He wasn't the same after that. He didn't hurt that little boy or probably any other one. The kids he made friends with were kids who in 10 lifetimes would probably never get to know someone like him. He took himself to their level because his spirituality taught him to embrace those who aren't as fortunate as you are. He may not have always had good judgement but he had the right idea. If that made sense..

He trusted people too much...kids are good, but their grown up parents have their own ideas. One evil grown up in a kid's world was one too many. But the lower in the food chain you pick your friends the more likely this was to happen. When you want to believe the world can be ultimately a good place and you want it to change, take a look at man in the mirror and make a change. He lived the words he sung. And also died by them too. Trust comes with a price sometimes.

After that day he let all his toys go...he didn't even want to look at them anymore. He just ran away from them and hoped they'd just all go away because now grown ups had defiled them and saw them for something they weren't.

The world began to see him as more of a creature and less of a person or an artist for that matter. In time, people had even forgotten how great he was, including myself. I forgot he practically fed me for a whole summer.

In the height of his popularity madness I worked in a struggling convenience store, which was my 2nd job. My first job made enough to pay the bills the convenience store gave me enough to eat plus whatever the owner dude let me take home.

However late in the spring the store was dying and we started a wall to sell souveniers with his picture on them....shirts...key chains...pins..

As quickly as we stocked the stuff it would sell out, need to be restocked and probably kept the store open 3 months longer than it might have. Kids who didn't have a dime otherwise saved to buy a pin of his face because they wanted to be like him.

We all owe him a little something I guess.

Maybe when the time came that I understood him a little, I also understood myself a little better. When I watched the made for TV movie of his life and as he was getting a little crazy and weird. When he was getting older and more popular, he confessed to his mother that he didn't know what to do with himself.

"I have all these stories living in my head I have to tell." he told her.

Now I knew how THAT felt! If I wasn't a slightly better adjusted adult than he was, the feeling he had was the same feeling I had and could easily eaten me up. He also had millions of reasons why he needed to tell the story just right where as I simply don't have that kind of pressure to do so.

Maybe this was all messed up but I now understood him more and as he became more childlike, maybe I knew why.

When my grandchildren began entering my life, the child within me was reborn. My kids had begun to make me playmates per se and I could see that I didn't need a song and dance routine to find that escape route. I could leave me for a little while thru the eyes of a child and be one of them again. Then when I returned to myself it really was ok to be me. Just like he tried to show us all along.

I think I know what he felt when they were around. Who amongst us wouldn't want to be young again but knowing all you know now? Kids have a way of bringing you back to life and remember all those things that were cool about being a child.

But now he had own kids as well. The problem is that in order to be a good father to your kids you can only be so much of a buddy. There is more to parenting than being a friend. Something that is too much for child to handle. Your kids aren't there for a sleepover, they don't go home, they already are home.

Eventually he proved maybe this is something he probably shouldn't be doing.

When he passed, I thought about the guy who tried so hard to be a young and keep his life that he basically died trying. But news of his death was kind of something no one seemed to get caught off guard with.

What I think I liked the most was the focus. Media kept the focus on the good side. What we liked, the music, the performer, the dreamer and human. Nothing else really mattered anymore did it?

When you "look over your shoulder(s)(sic) honey", he's right where you found him..showing you someone could walk on the moon right here on Earth if they really wanted to...you could meet a President, a king, a giraffe or a monkey. You could be loved by other performers and show people the world can be a magical place if you just look for it. You'll remember him giving of himself, his money or his imagination that we all make the difference in our world and should never be afraid to reach you hand out to somebody in need.

Or just as it all started for me as my grandmother in her own form eloquence called him... the "little colored boy" with the song and dance thing making his mother money and not driving her crazy.

All you have to do is just call out his name and He'll always be there!

Michael Jackson was 50 years old chronologically.