coketalk:

Soak it up, kids. This is our “Elvis is Dead” moment. You only get this once in a generation.

It doesn’t matter if you thought he was a freak. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t like his music. It doesn’t matter one bit what you thought of him. He was a king, and when a king dies the world is never the same.

The media circus we will witness in the coming days will seem cartoonishly silly, but I promise you this is an important moment. The cultural implications of June 25th, 2009 will ripple outwards into the Zeitgeist and forever mark your memory.

Michael Jackson is dead, and — let’s be clear — so is your youth.

It’s why you have that knot in your gut, even though your head tells you this is all so ridiculous. Deep down, you know. In the decades to come, this day will forever serve as a demarcation line between being young and being old.

That’s what it meant to our parents when the King of Rock died back in 1977, and that’s what the death of the King of Pop will one day mean to us.

Don’t swallow that lump in your throat. It’s real, and we shouldn’t be ashamed to mourn our youth.