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Friday, October 8, 2010

Like A Baby

Now I know how Elvis must have felt as the birth of Lisa Marie was approaching. Soon to have our first child ourselves, I've even acted like Elvis, having taken my wife on a couple of practice runs to the hospital just like he did, checking which entrance to drive to.

Being reminded of this Elvis episode, I looked it up in a couple of books. Turns out there are two versions of what happened when Elvis and Priscilla were driven to the hospital when she was having their baby.

According to Jerry Schilling, the plan was to go to Methodist Hospital, with him at the wheel. In his book Me And A Guy Named Elvis, he tells the story of how Charlie rode shotgun and pointed out that they had arrived at the wrong hospital, having forgotten to tell Jerry that they'd switched over to Baptist Hospital.

Alan Fortras (in his book Elvis From Memphis to Hollywood) as well as Lamar Fike (in Elvis And The Mempis Mafia) paints another picture, with a couple of decoy cars leading the press to Methodist Hospital while Jerry or Charlie (here their stories disagree) forgot the game plan and headed to Methodist as well.

It all worked out in the end though, Priscilla giving birth to Lisa Marie at Baptist, on February 1, 1968. She was a beautiful child and Elvis was, of course, both excited and proud. I'm sure I will be too, in a couple of days. And I'm confident we'll find the right hospital, although there are two of them here as well.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on your soon to be born baby and on your new role as a Dad.
I for one have a child of my own (she's 7 now), and I still can vividly recall that birth date.
Though I'm very proud and happy about the occassion I wouldn't want to go through it again.
Good luck in all my friend.

Jake said...

Enjoy every minute (not sure your wife will. It's your baby - you rock it. Enjoy your writing greatly. Best wishes to you both

Anonymous said...

Congratulations Thomas. I'm sure your baby will hear nothing but the finest lullabyes :)

Uncle MÃ¥rten said...

I'm so excited, I just, oh, I can't wait ...! ;-)

Thomas said...

Thank you all for your encouraging words. Today is the preliminary birth date, but no baby so far. Any day now, I guess!

Anonymous said...

Don't leave five sleepy heads hanging, do you have an update? ;^)