It’s been a couple days since Michael Jackson passed away, and all the world/blogosphere is still buzzing away about the death. It’s still very hard for me to believe that the man died at the still-young age of 50; I remember growing up listening to his music and watching old music videos of the Jackson 5 on VH1. My siblings and I used to aspire to learn all the dance moves and found ourselves garbling together the lyrics of songs such as “Dancing Machine” and “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough”.
The point of this entry is not simply to remember Jackson, but to also present a strange incident that occurred to me on the morning of the 25th:
It was just a normal Thursday morning for me; hopped onto the bus, took my 40-minute commute downtown. I crossed Market Street and was walking towards the office building when, out of the corner of my eye, I spied a character dressed up strangely: the man was wearing a Michael Jackson-esque outfit, similar to what Jackson wore for his “Thriller” video. At first, I thought the guy was just dressed up weirdly and I shrugged it off as being “Oh, this is San Francisco; I’ve seen weird characters before.” But then, I studied the man’s outfit a little longer, and I realized that, in fact, he was intentionally dressing up as Michael Jackson, with the single white glove and everything. I didn’t study the man’s face too long; this whole little incident only took probably a minute out of my time that morning. It was 8 AM PST.
Michael Jackson was taken to the hospital around 12 PM PST. He died around 3 PM PST.
So, then, how did that man know? What was the purpose of that man dressing up as Michael Jackson so early in the morning? Did he somehow know? Was he deemed a “crazy man” but, in actuality, has psychic powers?
I hadn’t even thought much of that morning incident until the news broke of Jackson’s death and then, suddenly, that image of the man from the morning came back to me, and I felt myself growing spooked.
I don’t know if I’ll ever know what that man had meant by the outfit, but it sure gave me something unexpected to ponder upon.