I’ve lived long enough to see man walk on the moon and a man do the Moonwalk. And I remember where I was for both of them.

I watched Neil Armstrong take that “giant leap for mankind” on my Uncle Tommy and Aunt Ceola’s spindly legged 19-inch color TV on July 20, 1969.

On May 16, 1983, I saw Michael Jackson stop time. He did this otherworldly dance move, sliding backward across the stage as if he was walking against a fast-moving conveyor belt. They called it the Moonwalk.

In both cases I couldn’t believe what I had just seen.

It’s fitting that Michael Jackson came on the scene in 1969. That year, the album “Diana Ross Presents the Jackson Five,” came out. The hit single from the album, “I Want You Back,” blared from pop radio stations and car stereos all that summer.

The Jackson Five was the black community’s version of the Beatles. And Michael — Joe and Katherine Jackson’s youngest son and brother to Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon — was the cute one.

But white audiences dug their music, too. The Jackson Five were perhaps America’s first black teen idols.

At first I didn’t care for the Jackson Five. Not many boys did, as I remember. We thought they were a band for young girls. But we quickly learned that if you wanted to meet girls, sooner or later you had to get into the Jackson Five. So we did.

It helped us like Michael when he wrote a love story about a rat, “Ben,” in 1972. When he came out with the Quincy Jones-produced “Off the Wall” in 1979, disco was up in full effect. Suddenly Michael was hip. He had grown up.

By the time “Thriller” came out in 1982, Michael was bigger than the Beatles and Elvis. The album stayed on the Billboard Top 10 for 80 straight weeks.

I bought my son Lonnie a red “Thriller” jacket. He and all his friends started wearing one glove. And when Michael danced to “Billie Jean” on “Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever,” everyone caught the craze. Michael was the greatest entertainer of our generation. He was the new Elvis.

Then he became a freak. He underwent numerous plastic surgeries that made him look more like a mannequin. His skin went from dark to light and his hair became less kinky.

He did weird stuff, like trying to purchase the Elephant Man’s bones and sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

Worse, he was accused twice of child molestation. He settled out of court on one charge and was acquitted on the other. But his reputation was forever tarnished.

That’s when I stopped liking Michael Jackson. Like most everyone else, I laughed at all the jokes about his skin color and odd behavior. I reviled him for the child molestation charges.

A few months ago, I got the 25th anniversary edition of “Thriller” to review in my “Street Beats” music blog. I listened to the familiar songs again and watched the videos of “Beat It” and “Thriller” on the accompanying DVD and thought about what a tragedy it was that all that talent got lost in the midst of his troubles.

Michael Jackson was James Brown, Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra and Elvis rolled into one skinny, high pants and one-glove-wearing person.

No one on earth could dance like that. There’s someone in heaven now who can.

Let God judge him.

Alonzo Weston can be reached at alonzow@npgco.com.