Finals week is stressful enough for any teenager. Now add a famous houseguest.
TJ Jackson knows exactly how that goes. He’s the youngest son of Tito Jackson, Michael’s older brother, and the youngest member of 3T, the singing group he formed with his brothers Taj and Taryll. In an interview with Yahoo Parenting, back when he was starring in Lifetime’s “The Jacksons: Next Generation,” TJ looked back on one very unusual week from his school days.
“One time, Uncle Michael stayed at our house during high school finals week,” he said.
TJ was born in July 1978, so he was 15 that winter. Most kids his age had exams on their minds and not much else. TJ had the King of Pop around the house.
And Michael didn’t sit still. TJ remembers going to the movies and toy stores with his uncle that week, which sounds like a pretty great way to break up exam days. It’s easy to forget that the biggest star on the planet was also somebody’s uncle, the kind who’d happily spend an afternoon in a toy aisle with his nephews.
Then, early one morning, the ground started shaking.
“The big Northridge ’94 earthquake hit,” as TJ put it. It was Jan. 17, 1994, at 4:30 in the morning, and the whole Los Angeles area felt it. A lot of you probably remember the news coverage. Now think about being 15, in the middle of finals, with Uncle Michael in the house when it happened.
Michael got the family out.
Their first stop was Michael’s Neverland. TJ still describes it as “a magical, amazing place of pure happiness.” After a scare like that before sunrise, it must have felt like a different world.
But they didn’t stay there. The family got on a plane and headed for Las Vegas.
Before we get to Vegas, it’s worth hearing TJ in his own voice, because in this KTLA 5 interview he shares a memory of his Uncle Michael.
TJ Jackson sharing a memory of his Uncle Michael on KTLA 5
So, Las Vegas. “We stayed at Caesars Palace for a week,” TJ said.
Back home in Los Angeles, the aftershocks kept coming. The family was safe and far away from all of it, but Michael was keeping track.
Each morning Michael came in with news of the aftershocks. Then, as TJ remembers it, he’d ask his nephews the very same question:
“Aren’t you happy we left?”
Every single morning. You can almost hear the grin behind it.
It’s such an uncle thing to say. He’d made the call to leave, and every new report from home gave him one more chance to point out that he’d been right. Most families have someone like that. In TJ’s family, that someone happened to be Michael Jackson.
What makes the story land is how ordinary it is. There’s no stage and no crowd in it. It’s a man walking in with the latest news and teasing his nephews a little, the same way he would have if they’d all stayed home in Los Angeles.
TJ was the one who passed it along, years later, and it’s clear the memory stuck with him. Of all the things he could have shared about growing up with Uncle Michael, he picked the week his uncle got everyone out of town and then asked about it every morning.