Personal Narrative: I have seen Elvis Presley

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I Have Seen Elvis While driving down the expressway late last Saturday night I saw the strangest thing. There on the side of the road was an old broken-down blue Cadillac. As I passed, that's when I saw it. Out of the corner of my eye; it was him. There stood Elvis Presley, the King, kicking at the flattened tire of his rusted out Cadillac. I swear it was him. He had the side-burns, the wonderfully slicked back hair, and just as he went out of sight I swear he was doing that lip thing. As I think back on that night I wonder to myself if it was really him or if I just really wanted it to be. To me he is a symbol of both a lifestyle and a generation. Even though he supposedly died a month before I was born, his image and his likeness has so much meaning for me. Was it his greasy hair, the rebellious sexuality of his gyrating hips or just that sullen look in his eye? All these years I have never really known how my obsession with him came about. Now that I am in college I am beginning to question how this man of relatively little talent became such a hero to me and such a legend of American pop-culture? I guess for me, I am just infatuated with his image. You could say I'm sold on it. Elvis was everything I have always wanted to be. He was a rebellious loner and also incredibly popular. Elvis was always carrying around a pretty guitar but it is rumored he could barely play three cords on it. Presley was so phenomenally talented that even after dead for more than twenty-two years, he is still making more money than the average hard working American. He was a poor southern boy who was manufactured and constructed into American royalty. It is for these reasons that I hold a special place in my heart for Elvis. It is also for these reasons that I will from now on respectfully refer to him as, The King. The King is the result of the manipulation and the marketing of the American public through the use of the mass media. The first weapon used to target the wallets of the American people was the record. Rock 'n' Roll, a rebellious new sound that was immediately embraced by the young teen-agers of the fifties was a great turning point in our American society.

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