Elvis Presley Asks That You Not Step On His Good Shoes

And the request for 19 marshmallows in hot chocolate

Nice dress shoes

Today would’ve been Elvis Presley’s 88th birthday. He changed how we listen to music and inspired countless individuals and groups. Articles tell us he appreciated his fans, said he was nothing without them, was charitable, and never shirked serving his country. There’s plenty to read about him having an identical twin who was stillborn and how this may have influenced his life.

Elvis was also the child of an incarcerated parent. In “Blue Suede Shoes,” by Carl Perkins, the lyrics tell us what the singer will and won’t accept. It’s all right to burn the singer’s house, steal their car, as well as other unsavory or criminal behavior. None of those things were as important to the crooner as stepping on their nice shoes.

Unique needs of each child

Part of a project during my senior year of undergraduate studies included a semester as a teaching assistant in a classroom in southern California. The children in this classroom were a unique group. Many of them had parents behind bars.

It’s not uncommon for first graders to say what’s on their minds, so I heard interesting things from loving, sometimes needy, sometimes confused kids. All were eager learners, and some knew more about the world than one might expect from first graders.

A little girl kept me updated every morning on what was happening at home. One morning, she told me a car had come the night before and picked up her dad. “They took him back to jail,” she said.

She held up a picture she’d drawn earlier, of two mugs of hot chocolate, with marshmallows.

“When my daddy gets out,” she said, “We’re going to have hot cocoa, and we’ll each have 19 marshmallows.”

Her little world was shattered with her dad behind bars. The most important thing to her was to share a cup of hot cocoa one day with daddy when he got out, and how many marshmallows each of them would get was important.

The marshmallows were something she felt she had control over. She hung onto that thought with everything she had.

Sometimes it’s the smallest things that mean so much. We don’t know how the child of an incarcerated parent is feeling. But if we listen carefully, we may understand what matters to them, which may make all the difference.