I Found My Elvis Ticket

I remember the day Elvis died. It was August 16, 1977 of course, and I was at my Aunt Marsha’s in Windham, Maine. I was a few months away from turning 4 and I remember nothing else from that day. Is that weird to remember something when you’re 4? I remember this day because both my mother and Aunt Marsha were uncontrollably sobbing. That will burn a memory into a four year old. I don’t remember either of them crying before, let alone together. They were both huge Elvis fans and The King had just passed away. I remember walking down my Aunts stairs and they just kept crying. Someone must have told me the reason why they were sobbing. My sister? Sadly, they both had tickets to see him perform the very next day at The Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland, Maine. They would never get to see The King perform.

Years later, the memory of that day still exists. Not that I thought about it all the time, but it was there whenever Elvis would come up on TV or in conversation. I would tell people, “My mother and Aunt had tickets to see him.” It’s one of my memories. One day my mother was cleaning and she pulls out this Elvis Presley ticket for August 17th at The Civic Center. I was floored. “You still have that?” Of course she did.

“You want it?” Then of course she gave it to me because my Mom is awesome. I asked her if she was sure and she said it was ‘ok’, so I was good with that! So now I have a ticket to an Elvis Presley concert ticket from 1977 to a show he would never play. Unreal.

Then I lost it. I lost the f****ing Elvis Presley ticket somewhere in my house. It had been gone for maybe three years. It was painful to think about. Did I throw it away somehow? I would never know. A few weeks ago I woke up and decided to tear the house apart to find the ticket. First box I pulled out had tons of stuff. Old baseball card, Star Wars cards, old books. Just a mess of things to go through, but I was ready. I pulled out the first thing that was on top of my box of goodies. ‘Wicked’. The story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. I flipped through real quick and thought, “Would I stick something in the pages of this book?” First flip through…nothing. I opened up the first few pages. Boom. Elvis ticket. Holy shit. So excited. There it was. It had been missing for three or four years, but here it was again. I was ready to spend all day going through all of my old boxes, but it literally took me 5 minutes. I had looked multiple times over the last few years, but 5 minutes into my Saturday morning I found the ticket. I was…All Shook Up.