“I had always shouldered a lot of responsibility, but it suddenly seemed that everyone wanted a piece of me. There wasn’t that much to go around, and I needed to be responsible to myself. I had to take stock of my life and figure out what people wanted from me and to whom I was going to give wholly. It was a hard thing for me to do, but I had to learn to be wary of the people around me. God was at the top of my list of priorities, and my mother and father and brothers and sisters followed. I was reminded of that old song by Clarence Carter called “Patches”, where the oldest son is asked to take care of the farm after his father dies and his mother tells him she’s depending on him. Well, we weren’t the sharecroppers and I wasn’t the oldest, but those were slim shoulders on which to place such burdens. For some reason I always found it very difficult to say no to my family and the other people I loved. I would be asked to do something or take care of something and I would agree, even if I worried that it might be more than I could handle” Michael Jackson-Moonwalk
