Death of My Teen Years

I THINK I CLOSED the pages on my teenaged years with the news of the deaths of Farrah Fawcett-Majors and Michael Jackson. I grew up and went to college with both of these personalities holding iconic status in the popular culture around me. My first 10,000 miles as a car owner were powered with a lot of Michael Jackson's discography. MJ's creativity and showmanship were more than stage entertainment because they influenced the early years of my daughters. Both of my pre-school daughters were scared by the Thriller video, one piece of music that I carry as a permanent part of my pocket media collection. Farrah Fawcett formed part of a TV Room playlist during my college days. Even though everyone in the room knew how every episode of Charlie's Angels unfolded, we still sat and ate our cold pizza during the reruns. Those mindless television moments often capped exceptionally strenuous weeks of academic and physical activity in a formative environment that led to me earning pilot's wings and continuing to more than 3500 hours in the front of 19 different aircraft. On some of the most demanding missions, tracks from Michael Jackson's music played in my headset while I wrestled a big plane behind a tanker aircraft and downloaded yet-another load of fuel on missions crossing the Atlantic Ocean. I still have some of those high altitude mixtapes and MJ's music fills a sizeable portion of them. RIP Michael Jackson. RIP Farrah Fawcett.

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