I'm all shook up.
As if Michiganders don't have enough to worry about with Dr. Kevorkian's death machine, Bob Stempel's mothballed plants and election year fairy tales...
Now the United States Postal Service, who cheerfully charges 29 cents to ship my credit cards payment to the pirates who stiff me for 21 percent interest, wants me to spend 19 more pennies on a post card to select a stamp commemorating the King of Rock 'n' Roll.
And you know what? I can't wait.
Not only is this probably the first ballot issue in history not tied to taxes, crime or the hollow vows of a grinning gadfly, it provides us all an opportunity to flip off the fax machine and cellular phone and take a little retrospective mind mind trip.
Picking an Elvis is a heavy burden.
The young one or or old one? The fresh-faced, bright-eyed kid with the world at feet or the driven, desperate addict whose millions could buy anything but peace of mind.
Elvis Presley is not somebody I only heard about from my mother.
When The King crooned to a basset hound on the Ed Sullivan show in the late '50s, I was glued to the our black and white TV with my best friend Claudia, both of us sure watching this tall, dark, guy gyrate with his guitar was a lot more fun than playing with Suzys (precursor to Barbies) but not, as yet, sure why.
We were likewise in the front row of the movie house at the opening of "Love Me Tender", and got into trouble in school the next day when our teacher Mrs. Burns, who strongly resembled Presley's house in the aforementioned film, intercepted our notes fantasizing about meeting this cool and dreamy boy, the likes of whom could not be found among the spindly crew-cutted pests at the Third Ward School.
Elvis was our first love; an affection free from fear of rejection, pregnancy or AIDS. We didn't even mind sharing him. In fact, it was fun. We played his records non-stop and squealed over his picture in Teen Magazine.
By the time a bloated Presley was bursting the seams of his white jumpsuit on a Vegas stage, Claudia and I were all grown up. She wisely moved south to a warmer climate and I was still braving northern winters. Our 45 RPM records had been replaced by 8-track tapes. We had traded the King's velvet voice and glossy photos for attainable, sometimes grumpy men who had no clue where to hang a wet towel, a condition I believe to be genetic and gender-specific. Dr. Spock displaced Teen and financed color TVs for our mortgaged houses.
Innocence, for Claudia and Elvis and me, had gone the way of blue suede shoes.
To those who question the wisdom of a vote for something as frivolous as an Elvis stamp given the sorry state of the world, I say there couldn't be a better time for Presley postage; comic relief in a play crying for script changes.
So I will be in line at the post office April 4, 1992, and when I cast my vote it will be for Elvis the boy, who sang his way into my heart when pre-Stempel '57 Chevys were proudly cruising Woodward Avenue; when, in the words of Merle Haggard, "Coke was still cola, a joint was a bad place to be."
