The Day Elvis Almost Died I was in the backseat of my parents' red Cutlass on a warm fall day in 1984. My only entertainment was listening to the slurping sound in the back of my thigh did when I lifted it off the sticky vinyl seat. I remember seeing patchwork fields of rainbow-colored leaves resting on the yellow grass, wishing I could rake them into big piles, so I could run through them, scattering them back across the field. I rolled down the dusty window to get a better view of the pastures as the strong wind blew across my face and through my hair. I stuck my head out the window and opened my mouth, so my cheeks puffed out like Dizzy Gillespie's when he played the trumpet. Slowly, my cheeks began to deflate and the wind died down as my father braked the car to turn into the driveway of my grandparents' house, the site of our annual family picnic in May. My whole family had already arrived when we arrived. All my uncles immediately bombed the car, laughing playfully with my father who was always late so he wouldn't have to help them cook. My dad Joe, with his white afro, and my grandma Lee Lee, who limped like a peg-legged pirate because one leg was shorter than the other, were sitting in the lawn chairs and talking about how much I had grown . My Uncle Kelly, who had been shot in the left arm by his ex-wife during an argument, went around complaining about how he would starve if he didn't eat soon. My Aunt Rosie, who always wore a tiny pair of rose-shaped earrings and held a wad of chewing tobacco in her mouth, spoke to my mother between spits of brown liquid and liquid directed into her plastic cup. Including my cousins ​​and some distant relatives, there were about twenty-five people talking, laughing and mingling. And there I was, all alone in the land of giants, with only my cowgirl Barbie to protect me. I felt like a guppy trying to swim upstream with a school of trout. Even though we had only been there five minutes, finding my father and leaving were my priorities.