Well, Darling Ones,
I did it. I popped my post-stroke wheelchair user (PSWU) concert cherry last night. It was John Cougar Mellencamp, and I’m glad I saved myself for him and the Mystic Lake Amphitheater.
Last night was many PSWU firsts. I ate inside a restaurant with friends. I met my social media friends Carrie & Kyle in actual life. I accidentally hit a very angry man with my foot because Jonas, my motorized wheelchair, didn’t stop as quickly as that guy did. Also, I cried during “Jack & Diane,” but there’s a 99% chance that would have happened pre-stroke.
The Coug’s was in fine form last night for a dude in his 70s, and he did a pretty good job of filling out the sprawling venue. The crowd in our area was super into the show and knew all the words to all the songs.
Sister #4 and I were particularly enamored with a guy and his wife a few rows down from us. This couple had to be in their late 70s or early 80s. He was a balding white-haired man with a lime-green polo tucked into the grandpa khakis pulled up to his nipples. He clapped and air-drummed to each song, frequently standing up to dance. If I could have stood I’d have put him in my pocket.
The second song he played was “Small Town” and he thanked the crowd for coming ALLLLLLLLLL the way out to Shakopee to see him. The amphitheater is 3.5 miles from Supergenius HQ according to google maps. In my head I was all, “you just got done singing about small towns, motherfucker. This is a small town.”
I still refuse to call Shakopee a suburb even though it’s been one for 25 years. It’ll always be a small town to me.
Before singing “Rain on the Scarecrow,” The Coug’s gave his little spiel about family farms and how they’ve even destroyed. My sister said, out loud, “Yeah, this used to be a farm” and at the same time I said, “we’re on an old farm right now!” The ladies next to us were not amused, but more on them in a second.
Maneuvering the show in a wheelchair was particularly easy for the most part. I’m still so new to wheelchair driving I want a giant STUDENT DRIVER sign for my chairs. Working a wheelchair is not easy. Ableism made me think it’s be easy peasy. Working a wheelchair in a massive crowd is even more difficult. Not only are people incredibly unobservant they’re probably like me and think wheeling around is simple, like walking is for most people.
We got to jump the security line and had special accessibility seating that required wristbands, which was pretty sweet. Because the Amphitheater was built roughly 10 minutes ago (not even kidding), the sidewalks were smooth and there were ramps and an elevator that took us to the right level. We only discovered the elevator situation after doing the ramps, which were a little terrifying. Jonas isn’t as deep as Ruby Vroom (my manual wheelchair) so when going down inclines I’m convinced I will fall out at any second. Some of that feeling is probably tied to my constant-falling down feeling.
The only thing that wasn’t sweet were those ladies next to us in the accessible seating. This was an area on the edge of the second tier, fenced off from the rows of stadium seating. There were, I’m guessing sixteen seats in this area. Sister #4 and I had seats 15 & 16 and were at the end.
To get these seats you had to do a little digging on the site, according to my sister who bought my ticket. The rules clearly and repeatedly stated this was a section for wheelchair users and one companion. While the section had four or five wheelchair users aside from me, those ladies next to use were neither wheelchair users nor companions. They didn’t even use a cane or a walker! They were, however, with the four or five people in front of us in the non-accessible seating.
My sister was salty about this from the get-go and the more I thought about it the angrier I got. While I know there are many invisible ways to be disabled, these seats were specifically for wheelchair users. The wristbands even had a wheelchair person on them. And if they weren’t going to be for wheelchair users they should have gone to big and/or tall people since the chairs were armless and movable. These small, entitled white ladies should have sat in the regular seats with the rest of the hoi polloi. At one point Ms. Entitled #1 pulled a Shark Chill Pill fan and was cooling herself with her feet up on the fence. I wanted to smash the fucking thing on the cement.
Can you imagine having such audacity coupled with disrespect for wheelchair users to think you deserve that seat just because you wanted it? I’ve spent today putting so many hexes on those two women. No more green lights. They’ll never enjoy a fresh, crunchy potato chip in their favorite flavor again. They will have to wash all their clothes twice because they will never remember to put them in the dryer the first time.
Don’t mess with the Spinster Goddess of Minnesota.
Love,
Jodi