The Day Elvis Almost Died :: Personal Narrative, Autobiographical Essay

The Day Elvis Almost Died I was riding in the backseat of my parents departure Cutlass on a warm fall day in 1984. My alone entertainment was listening to the sucking sound the back of my thigh made when I lifted it off the sticky vinyl seat. I remember seeing patchwork fields of rainbow-colored leaves resting on the yellow grass, neediness that I could rake them into big piles, so I could run done them, scattering them across the field again. I rolled the dusty windowpane down to get a better look at the pastures as the hard wind rushed in over my face and through my hair. I stuck my head through the window and opened my mouth, so my cheeks would huff out wish Dizzy Gillespies when he played his trumpet. Slowly, my cheeks began to deflate, and the wind slow as my pa braked the car to turn into the driveway of my grandparents home, the location of our one-year May family picnic. My whole family had already arrived when we showed up. All my uncles immediately b ombarded the car, playfully snickering with my dad about always being late so he would not have to help them cook. My Papa Joe, with his Afro of white hair, and my Grandma Lee Lee, who limped like a peg-legged pirate because one leg was shorter than the other, were sitting in scupper chairs talking about how much I had grown. My Uncle Kelly, whose left arm was throw off by his ex-wife during an argument, was walking around, complaining about how he was sacking to starve if he didnt eat soon. My Aunt Rosie, who always wore a niggling pair of rose earrings and kept a wad of chewing tobacco in her mouth, talked with my mom between spits of brown, runny liquid directed into her formative cup. Including my cousins and a few distant relatives, approximately twenty-five people were in that location talking, laughing, and mingling. And there I was, all alone in the land of giants with solely my cowgirl Barbie to protect me. I felt like a guppy stressful to swim upstream wit h a school of trout. Even though we had only been there for five minutes, finding my dad and leaving were my priorities.